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Idaho prosecutors have opposed a request to move the trial of Bryan Kohberger out of the county where he’s accused of having killed four University of Idaho students in 2022.
Koberger is charged with murder for the killing of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, who were found stabbed to death in November 2022.
“(The) defendant has failed to meet his burden of showing that change of venue in this case is necessary or convenient,” prosecutors argued in a filing made public Tuesday.
They took issue with the suggestion to move the trial to Ada County, home to Boise, over 300 miles away from Latah County, where the killings occurred. The prosecutors said the court should “decline to relocate itself, the state, and scores of witnesses hundreds of miles only to face another jury pool with similarly high media exposure.”
Prosecutors added in the filing that Kohberger’s team had used flawed survey data in its requests to move the trial, and that the interest of justice for the families of the dead students would be impacted if the case moved elsewhere.
The former Washington State University graduate student’s lawyers asked in June for the case to be relocated, arguing extensive pre-trial media reporting about the case in the small university town of Moscow, Idaho, meant he would not get a fair trial.
“A fair and impartial jury cannot be found in Latah County because of the extensive publicity that is ongoing and inflammatory,” they argued in a July filing. “The inflammatory nature of the publicity has included inaccurate information and inadmissible information.
“The publicity has been extremely pervasive in the small community of Latah County. Remediations, such as enlarging the jury pool will not cure the problem.”
Location isn’t the only issue that has been disputed in the case so far.
Earlier this year, Kohberger sought to compel prosecutors to reveal more evidence, including cell phone records, that would be used at trial.
In May, a former roommate of the slain students described receiving a campus alert about the 2022 murder and then texting Mogen.
“I remember, I think, getting a second alert or I had been driving home and I texted like our group of friends, and I just had said, ‘Has anyone heard from Maddie?’ And I remember, like my last text message to her was like, ‘Are you okay?’” Ashlin Couch said.
“And I felt it like right then and there, I kind of just knew that something was wrong.”
The trial is set for June 2025.
