Idaho murder suspect wants trial moved after survey results say town will ‘burn the courthouse down’ if he’s acquitted

CNN

By Jean Casarez, Zoe Sottile and Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — Lawyers for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in 2022, argued Thursday to move his trial out of Latah County, which they said would be unable to provide an unbiased jury for the long-awaited trial.

The hearing is the latest update in a grinding two-year legal battle to get Kohberger’s case before a jury, which has seen numerous pretrial hearings and complaints of slowness from the victims’ families. The trial, which could see Kohberger face the death penalty, is currently set for June 2025.

Kohberger has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.

Attorneys for Kohberger, 29, argued in a court filing the trial should be moved out of Latah County due to a “mob mentality” threatening the safety of their client and the courthouse. They’re hoping to move the trial more than 300 miles away to Ada County, home of Boise, the state’s capital and largest city.

“The traumatized town of Moscow is understandably filled with deeply held prejudgment opinions of guilt,” the defense wrote.

Thursday’s hearing ended without a decision by Judge John Judge, who said he is going to review “everything” and “go through the law again,” which he said will take time.

“I’ll do my best. It’s a challenge,” the judge said at the end of the hearing.

The defense states anonymous residents of Latah County, where the killings took place, told defense experts in telephone surveys if Kohberger is not convicted:

• “They’d burn the courthouse down. Outrage would be a mild description.”

• “They would probably find and kill him.”

• “There would likely be a riot and he wouldn’t last long outside because someone would do the good ole’ boy justice.”

‘This story has legs’

Defense witness Amani El-Alayli, a social psychology professor at Eastern Washington University, told the court that finding potential jurors in Latah County not tainted by media coverage of the case would be virtually impossible.

“I think it would be so hard to be a member of that community and be able to come in and be objective – arguably impossible. We don’t have a known method for undoing things,” El-Alayi said.

El-Alayli said jurors exposed to pretrial publicity are more likely to convict because they superficially process the media coverage, including fear-inducing headlines.

Additionally, the professor said, people in small communities like in Latah County are more likely to be influenced by statements from figures of authority. The police chief publicly expressing certainty about capturing the right suspect is automatically accepted as true, she said.

“Do you mean that when we walk into trial in the room full of potential jurors, there’s going to be a great majority of them that before we sit down, are going to have a feeling of bias against Mr. Kohberger?” defense attorney Anne Taylor asked.

“Yeah, I do. And we’ve seen the pictures, these ominous headlines. That connection can’t help but be made,” El-Alayi said.

Another defense witness, James Todd Murphy, president of the media monitoring and analysis service Truescope, said the firm has been gathering data on the case from numerous news sources and markets since February 2023.

Murphy told the court his analysis showed media coverage in Latah County on the Kohberger case offered twice as many opportunities to be seen per person than in Ada County. That’s due to the higher volume of coverage in the county coupled with the smaller pool of eligible jurors.

“You may have heard the phrase ‘this story has legs’ – a story that is extreme, unique, atypical has greater legs than say, high school football scores you hear on the 10 o’clock news on a Friday night,” he said. “This type of story will remain on the mind and be of interest up to and beyond the conclusion of this case.”

Media coverage of the Kohberger case – from January 2023 through August 2024 – in Ada County lagged behind Latah County by volume of coverage in most cases by 50% or more, Murphy said. And the interest in the story isn’t waning, he added.

Under questioning by prosecutor Ashley Jennings, who referred to charts from his research, Murphy acknowledged Ada County at times had more coverage of the case than Latah County.

“So for the first six months on this chart of volume of media coverage over time for Latah and Ada County, Ada County had more intense media coverage in January, February, March, April, May, and then June,” she said.

“So it’s fair to say for that first six months, Ada County did have, at times, fairly significantly more media coverage from Latah County?”

”Correct,” Murphy said.

The defense argued the prosecution recognizes “an enormous venue problem exists” and Kohberger “has a Constitutional right to a fair trial with an impartial jury.”

Latah County’s media coverage of the case is the highest in the state and the coverage “is often inaccurate and inflammatory,” the defense’s filing stated.

His attorneys said the survey found the more media accounts a potential juror knew of, the higher the prejudgment for guilt.

The defense’s argument is based on survey work conducted by defense expert Bryan Edelman of the consulting firm Trial Innovations in four Idaho counties, including Latah, where the Moscow killings took place and Ada County.

At one point during Edelman’s testimony Thursday afternoon, after the defense scrolled through many Facebook and other social media posts about the killings that were on the livestream for more than two minutes, the judge interjected.

“I don’t think we need to advertise all these, honestly. We’ve been trying to protect from this kind of stuff,” the judge said.

“I’m aware of it. I don’t look at it, I don’t read it. We know it’s there,” he added, referring to the posts.

The defense then asked for a break in the hearing, which the judge granted.

Edelman surveyed 400 residents in Latah County about their knowledge and prejudicial opinions of the case. Truescope, a media monitoring company, also looked at media coverage available to residents in Moscow and Boise but could not determine the amount of untraceable media reaching Idaho citizens in those cities from YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, or podcasts.

The filing noted while respondents in Latah County said there would be outrage from the community if Kohberger was not convicted, respondents in Ada County said community members would “go on with life as always” and “take it well.”

During his testimony, Edelman said Ada County was selected for the survey because it’s the largest county in the state, with a population size of 406,068 people over the age of 18 while Latah County has 32,515 of the same demographic.

“We know in large counties, it’s less of a big deal when a case moves there. It doesn’t become the biggest story in that community,” he said.

The defense argued Moscow does not have the proper facilities to accommodate an intensely publicized three-month trial and cited the changing of venue to Ada County in high-profile cases like the murder trials of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell. Vallow was sentenced to life in prison and her husband, Daybell, to death for murdering Vallow’s two children and Daybell’s first wife.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, have argued a fair and impartial trial can be held in Moscow, and intense media coverage of the case extends beyond Latah County. They criticized the survey findings, arguing they show “Latah County residents who have heard about the case were, overall, statistically less likely to prejudge the Defendant.”

Additionally, other strategies could be used to ensure a fair and impartial trial, like convening a large jury pool and thoroughly screening them, say prosecutors.

Moving the trial hundreds of miles away would be inconvenient for witnesses as well as the victims’ families, according to prosecutors.

Edelman also described the jury selection process for identifying those who have “case-specific” attitudes and knowledge about a case after learning details in the media rather than in court, with rules of evidence being applied, cross examination and experts offering counter opinions.

“When I hear it as evidence, it’s just confirming what I already know. It’s not new, I’m not processing it for the first time,” he continued. “So that’s one of the big problems – you need to identify the people who have that content and information.”

One of the biggest challenges in high-profile cases is figuring out what potential jurors know already.

The people surveyed who were asked what they’ve read, seen or heard about the Kohberger case responded with an average of between one and two pieces of information they learned from the media. But 96% of those respondents failed to mention at least one additional detail about the case that they later recognized in the course of the study, according to Edelman.

“We know there’s a high level of recognition in the community, but when you ask in jury selection what you’ve read, seen or heard about the case, very few people mention it,” he said.

Seating an impartial jury in Latah County is not attainable because the crime has been “seared into the community’s consciousness” and many residents have indirect or direct connections to the tragedy, Edelman said.

“People here have demonstrated they would experience fear, stress, panic in this community. There’s significant rumors and misinformation that have been spread and people have been exposed to in this community. There’s a feeling of pressure to convict,” he said.

Four college students killed in the night

The case stems from the murders on the morning of Sunday, November 13, 2022. Police in Moscow, Idaho, were called to a home near the University of Idaho and inside found the bodies of four students: Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Ethan Chapin, 20; and Xana Kernodle, 20. All four had been stabbed to death.

The slayings – and the ensuing manhunt for a suspect – rattled the small college town of Moscow, prompting fears about students’ safety and subsequent attacks.

Kohberger, then a graduate student at Washington State University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, was arrested at his parents’ home in Monroe County, Pennsylvania on December 30, a little over a month after the killings.

Law enforcement zeroed in on Kohberger partially through linking him to a white Hyundai Elantra seen in the immediate area of the killings. His DNA also matched DNA recovered from a tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims, according to court documents.

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