Bryan Kohberger's defense team opposes the death penalty: “Cruel and unusual”

Bryan Kohberger's defense team opposes the death penalty for the quadruple murder suspect from Idaho for several reasons.

Kohberger, 29, is charged with four counts of murder and burglary after allegedly killing Xana Kernodle, 20, Ethan Chapin, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Madison Mogen, 21, on November 13, 2022.

Arguments against the death penalty by Kohberger's defense attorneys include that there is no viable method of killing in Idaho in cases where the death penalty is imposed, that the state's process for obtaining the death penalty is unconstitutional, that a capital crime cannot be prepared within ten months, and that the death penalty violates the “prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.”

Kohberger's execution “by lethal injection or gunshot, as proposed by the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC), would be a violation of his right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and his right to a fair trial under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” his lawyers wrote.

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They also argue that execution by firing squad, which is the second legal method of execution in Idaho after lethal injection, “is not and never has been unconstitutional.”

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In additional documents filed Thursday, Kohberger's defense argues that “punishment that is not consistent with the evolving standards of a modern, civilized society is cruel and unusual.”

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“The vast majority of modern, civilized society has already abolished the death penalty because the execution of people by governments is recognized as an affront to human dignity and spirit,” his lawyers wrote. “The institutional killing of civilian prisoners is an insult to the modern, civilized world. The United States is regularly condemned by the international community for continuing to execute its own people.”

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Meanwhile, prosecutors argue that the state is trying to enforce an Idaho state law that says “a jury may decide not only guilt but also possible punishment.”

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“We are simply trying to fulfill our legal obligations. To portray it as if the state is trying to kill someone is an appeal to raw emotion and has no place in this courtroom,” prosecutors previously said.

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The defendant – a 29-year-old former doctoral student in criminology at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington – is accused of stabbing the four University of Idaho students to death with a KA-BAR-style knife in their home near campus in the early hours of November 13, 2022, a Sunday.

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Kohberger was arrested at his family home in Pennsylvania in late December 2022.

His trial is scheduled to take place in summer 2025 at the latest.

Source of the original article: Bryan Kohberger's defense team opposes the death penalty: “Cruel and unusual”