Lawyers for man accused in death of 4 Idaho students say his trial must be postponed due to strong bias

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Attorneys for the man accused of the knife murders four students from the University of Idaho in 2022 say the pressure to convict him is so great that some Latah County residents are predicting lynch mobs or riots if he is acquitted.

Bryan Kohberger's Defense attorney Elisa Massoth made that argument in a brief this month, saying the only way to get a fair trial was to move the trial to a new location.

John Judge of the Second Circuit is scheduled to preside over a hearing on the motion to change venue Thursday morning. If he approves, the trial will begin. planned for June 2025could be relocated from Moscow to Boise or another major city in Idaho.

Kohberger, a former student of criminal law at Washington State University, across the state line in Pullman, is charged with quadruple 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 November 13, 2022, in an apartment building near campus.

Six weeks later, police arrested Kohberger at his parents' home in Pennsylvania, where he was spending the winter break.

The killings shocked students at both universities and deeply shook the small city of Moscow. They also sparked widespread media coverage that Kohberger's defense team said was largely inflammatory and left the close-knit community heavily biased against their client.

Kohberger first requested a change of venue in January, when his attorney, Anne Taylor, wrote in a court document that a fair and impartial jury could not be found in Latah County “due to the extensive, inflammatory pre-trial coverage, the allegations made by the media against Mr. Kohberger that are inadmissible at his trial, the small size of the community, the offensive nature of the crimes he is accused of, and the seriousness of the charges brought against Mr. Kohberger.”

Defendants have a constitutional right to a fair trial, which requires finding jurors who are impartial and have not yet made up their minds about the defendant's guilt or innocence. But when the defense team hired a company to survey Latah County residents, 98% of respondents said they knew about the case, and 70% of that group said they already believed Kohberger was guilty. More than half of respondents who said that also said their opinion would not change, according to defense court records.

According to the documents, some interviewees also made dire predictions, saying that if Kohberger was acquitted, “there would probably be a riot and he wouldn't last long outside because someone would give the good old boy justice,” “they would burn down the courthouse,” and “there would be riots and the parents would take care of him.”

Prosecutors wanted the judge to ignore the survey because it did not include all the data about people who had refused to take the survey. Prosecutor Bill Thompson and Assistant Attorney General Ingrid Batey said in court documents that there are other ways to ensure a fair trial without moving the trial hundreds of miles away, including expanding the pool of potential jurors to include neighboring counties.

Any change of location would be costly and would force court staff, witnesses, experts, police officers and victims' families to make an inconvenient journey to the new location, the prosecution said.

Media coverage of the murder investigation was not limited to local and national news outlets, but also included true crime television shows, books, podcasts and YouTube shows, as well as social media groups on sites like Facebook, Reddit and TikTok.

Taylor said the media coverage has “completely spoiled” the atmosphere in Latah County.

“After the police arrested Mr. Kohberger, the public was ready to vilify him, and did so without regard to the constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence and the right to an impartial jury and a fair trial,” Taylor wrote. “The media focus on Mr. Kohberger was relentless and highly inflammatory.”