The judge overseeing the case of the criminology student accused of stabbing to death four University of Idaho students in 2022 issued final rulings in the case on Thursday, clearing the way for the long-awaited trial to begin.
While Judge Stephen Hippler denied a motion by Bryan Kohberger’s defense team to delay the trial, he did set a schedule that would see it begin a week later than initially planned.
Kohberger is accused of killing Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves in their off-campus rental on November 13, 2022. He was arrested six weeks later at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.
At the time, Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University, about 10 miles from the University of Idaho campus.
The modified schedule calls for sealed proceedings to take place from July 28 through August 1, with jury selection beginning on August 1. Hippler wrote that he expected to trial itself to begin on August 18 and continue through its completion.
Hippler released two major rulings on Thursday. In addition to denying the defense motion for a delay, he also denied their motion to present “alternate perpetrators” to the jury. The defense had identified four people it contended could have carried out the gruesome murders and wanted to present that information during trial.
Hippler, however, ruled the “alternate perpetrators” as “irrelevant,” although he added that the defense was not prohibited “from cross-examining law enforcement regarding the reasonableness of its investigation and its follow-up on plausible leads.”
The judge wrote that there is no evidence linking any of the four possible “alternate perpetrators” to the crime.
“Indeed,” he wrote, “it would take nothing short of rank speculation by the jury to make such a finding.”
Three of the four individuals were “socially connected to one of more of the victims” and had interacted with at least one in the hours prior to the murders and lived nearby. But, Hippler said, “there is no compelling evidence that any of them had a motive to kill the victims,” and, in fact, had all cooperated with investigators and provided DNA and fingerprint samples, none of which matched anything found at the crime scene.
The same was true of the fourth possible “alternate perpetrator,” who did not know the victims but instead had seen one of them at a store more than a month earlier and followed her outside while intending to approach and talk with her, but changed his mind.
“It is not sufficient for a defendant to merely offer up unsupported speculation that another person may have committed the crime, which is all the Defendant has done here,” Hippler wrote.
In denying the defense motion to delay the trial, Hippler wrote that the defense “has not made a showing that there is good cuase to continue the trial or that his substantial rights will be prejudiced by proceeding to trial as scheduled.
He dismissed the defense contention that prosecutors hadn’t disclosed information in a timely manner, noting that the attorneys waited until after “the expiration of discovery, all expert deadlines, and the final pretrial conference” to request an extension.
“Instead, defense counsel has robustly litigated this case, retaining approximately two dozen experts anda. full mitigation team, engaging in extensive motion practice and disclosing witness and exhibits lists with nary a whisper that a continuance would be sought,” Hippler said. “These actions belie his counsel’s ongoing — and ultimately empty — discovery complaints.”
The judge also said defense did not need further time to conduct thorough “life history” of their client for a potential sentencing phase of the trial, in the event of a conviction.
In a heavily redacted portion of the ruling dealing with Kohberger’s mental health and childhood, Hippler wrote that the defense motion “for a continuance for further information into [redacted] unsupported suspicions smacks of tactical gamesmanship and delay.”
Further, he wrote, “Defendant’s right to a fair trial is not denied by the pretrial publicity, which is not likely to subside with time.”
Kohberger’s trial has been moved to Ada County, out of Latah County, where the murders took place.
