Attorneys for the man charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students in 2022 say the pressure to convict is so severe that some Latah County residents are predicting lynch mobs or riots if he is acquitted.
Bryan Kohberger’s defense lawyer Elisa Massoth made that argument in a filing this month, saying the only way he can get a fair trial is to move it to a new location.
Second District John Judge is scheduled to preside over a hearing on the motion for a change of venue Thursday morning. If he agrees, the trial, set for June of 2025, could be moved from Moscow to Boise or another larger Idaho city.
Kohberger, a former criminal justice student at Washington State University, which is across the state line in Pullman, faces four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
The four University of Idaho students were killed sometime in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, in a rental house near the campus. Kaylee’s father, Steve Goncalves, told “48 Hours” last year that “there’s evidence to show that she awakened and tried to get out of that situation,” saying “she was trapped” based on the way the bed was set up.
Police arrested Kohberger six weeks later at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was spending winter break.
The killings stunned students at both universities and left the small city of Moscow deeply shaken. They also prompted widespread media coverage, much of which Kohberger’s defense team says was inflammatory and left the close-knit community strongly biased against their client.
Kohberger first requested a change of venue in January, when his attorney Anne Taylor wrote in a court filing that a fair and impartial jury could be found in Latah County “owing to the extensive, inflammatory pretrial publicity, allegations made about Mr. Kohberger to the public by media that will be inadmissible at his trial, the small size of the community, the salacious nature of the alleged crimes, and the severity of the charges Mr. Kohberger faces.”
Ted S. Warren / Getty Images
Defendants have a constitutional right to a fair trial, and that requires finding jurors that can be impartial and haven’t already made up their minds about the guilt or innocence of the person accused. But when the defense team hired a company to survey Latah County residents, 98% percent of the respondents said they recognized the case and 70% of that group said they had already formed the opinion that Kohberger is guilty. More than half of the respondents with that opinion also said nothing would change their mind, according to defense court filings.
Some respondents also made dire predictions, according to the filings, saying that if Kohberger is acquitted, “There would likely be a riot and he wouldn’t last long outside because someone would do the good ole’ boy justice,” “They’d burn the courthouse down,” and “Riots, parents would take care of him.”
Prosecutors wanted the judge to disregard the survey, saying it didn’t include all the data about people who declined to respond to the survey. Prosecutor Bill Thompson and Special Assistant Attorney General Ingrid Batey said in court documents that there are other ways to ensure a fair trial short of moving the proceeding hundreds of miles away, including widening the pool of potential jurors to include neighboring counties.
Any venue change would be expensive and also force court staffers, witnesses, experts, law enforcement officers and victims’ family members to make an inconvenient trip to the new location, the prosecution team said.
The media coverage of the investigation into the killings wasn’t limited to local and national news outlets. True crime-style television shows, books, podcasts and YouTube broadcasts also focused on the case, as have social media groups on sites like Facebook, Reddit and TikTok.
Taylor said the media coverage has “utterly corrupted” the atmosphere in Latah County.
“Once the police arrested Mr. Kohberger the public was ready to, and has, proceeded to vilify him without regard to the Constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence and a right to an impartial jury and fair trial,” Taylor wrote. “The media focus on Mr. Kohberger has been relentless and highly inflammatory.”
Earlier this year, Taylor argued in court that prosecutors were withholding information from the defense team, claiming that Latah County prosecutors have not provided a full video that allegedly shows Kohberger’s vehicle by the residence where the four students were killed. Taylor said that the defense has only “received parts of” the video, which is described in the probable cause affidavit that was used to arrest Kohberger, and said that the video did not have sound.
Goncalves’ family said in the spring that they were frustrated by how long it has taken the case to progress through the judicial system.
“This case is turning into a hamster wheel of motions, hearings, and delayed decisions,” the family said in a statement.