Attorneys for Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger are fighting to strike the death penalty in his high-profile case, arguing that the state has “no real means” of executing a convicted prisoner and that the so-called methods – which include an “inhumane” firing squad as an alternative – are “arbitrary” and “unconstitutional.”
Kohberger, 29, a former Washington State University criminology student who is accused of slaughtering four University of Idaho students at their off-campus home in November 2022, could be sentenced to death if convicted of the murders at his trial next summer.
The case of the shocking slayings that rattled the small town of Moscow was recently moved to Boise after the defense successfully argued that Kohberger would not have an impartial jury in the tight-knit community because of the extensive media coverage potentially tainting the jury pool.
Dressed in a dark suit, blue shirt and tie, Kohberger appeared in Ada County courtroom on Thursday with his defense team, who argued that their client could face death by firing squad if convicted under Idaho law, due to the shortage of lethal injection drugs across the country.
“I don’t believe our constitution allows for us to move forward and make him sit on death row for years and years and years if the way Idaho is doing it right now isn’t really working,” Kohberger’s public defender Ann Taylor told the judge.
“It’s not a realistic option, I think, to have him sit on death row and say Idaho’s going to figure out how to kill you at some point in the future in a way that isn’t cruel and unusual and a violation of rights,” she added.
Ada County District Court Judge Steven Hippler, who was recently assigned to the case, asked Taylor, “So you’re saying the anxiety of not knowing is a constitutional violation?”
“It is anxiety. It is fear,” she responded. “It’s the not knowing.”
She argued that Idaho is currently not capable of executing inmates on death row so that to keep a person on death row without a way to execute them is “dehumanizing.”
Latah County prosecutors responded to the defense’s argument, pointing out that Idaho’s current method of execution is lethal injection and that it is actually available.
"You don’t know decades from now what an alternative might be, maybe they’ll have a better argument decades from now on the method of execution because maybe there will be another method," Deputy Attorney General Jeffery Nye said, arguing that methods of execution should not take the death sentence off the table.
"You don’t get to, at the beginning, short circuit the whole thing and say death is off the table because the current method is unconstitutional," Nye said, adding “that’s not to say decades from now there’s not going to be a method to put him to death.”
Idaho, which is one of 27 US states that allow capital punishment, currently permits death by lethal injection and, as of last year, firing squad.
After hearing arguments from both the prosecution and defense, Judge Hippler said he would take the matter under advisement and issue a written ruling at a later date.
Judge Hippler also ruled on an earlier motion, allowing Kohberger to wear traditional courtroom attire, as opposed to a jail jumpsuit, in pre-trial hearings.
Kohberger’s attorney filed the motion last month, citing a Supreme Court decision from 1976 stating that forcing a defendant to wear a jail uniform to court could negatively impact whether a jury saw them as guilty of alleged crimes.
The former criminology Ph.D. student has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the fatal stabbings of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, whose bodies were found at their off-campus house in November 2022.
Kohberger was arrested around six weeks later and charged with the murders.
His trial is scheduled to begin in August 2025 and is expected to last until November 2025.
