Judge rules on defense effort to drop death penalty in Bryan Kohberger’s Idaho murder case
Bryan Kohberger, who is charged with murdering four University of Idaho students, can face the death penalty at his trial next summer, the judge in the case ruled.
Despite a slew of legal arguments made by Kohberger’s defense team to toss a death sentence as an option, none moved Judge Steven Hippler to strike it as a possible punishment if a jury finds him guilty. Prosecutors issued their intent last year to seek the death penalty for Kohberger with a conviction, and opposed the defense’s attempt to remove it as a sentencing option for jurors.
Hippler sided with the state in its arguments, and denied each of the defense’s requests to remove the death penalty. He largely pointed to the constitutionality of capital punishment in the U.S., as repeatedly upheld by the supreme courts of Idaho and the U.S. as the basis for his ruling.
“The court concludes relief in defendant’s favor is not warranted on any of the motions,” Hippler wrote in his 55-page order filed Tuesday, which posted to a state courts website Wednesday afternoon.
Hippler, who took over the case after the state Supreme Court chose to move the murder trial to Boise, needed less than two weeks to issue his decision. He heard oral arguments at a hearing earlier this month from prosecutors and Kohberger’s defense.
Idaho is one of 27 U.S. states that has the death penalty. However, six of those states have moratoriums on executions in place, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Idaho’s death row counts nine prisoners, but the state hasn’t executed one in more than 12 years, despite efforts to do so earlier this year.
Kohberger, who will turn 30 years old Thursday, is accused of the November 2022 stabbing deaths of the U of I students at a house near the college campus in Moscow. The victims were childhood best friends Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum and Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; their roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington, who was Kernodle’s boyfriend.
Kohberger faces four counts of first-degree murder and a count of felony burglary in the case. A defendant is eligible for the death penalty in Idaho only with a conviction of first-degree murder or conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Kohberger’s defense team centered many of its arguments in legal briefs and at this month’s hearing in court on the unconstitutionality and inconsistency of Idaho’s capital punishment system, and the state’s inability to carry it out. They also asserted that the death penalty breaks with international law and modern standards of decency.
“In sum, defendant has demonstrated no significant legislative or executive action taken since (2015) and (2020) with respect to the death penalty that would signify consequential change to societal standards of decency,” Hippler wrote. “Consequently, there is no basis to depart from settled law upholding Idaho’s death penalty statute as constitutional.”
Moscow homicide victims’ families weigh in
Steve and Kristi Goncalves, parents of Kaylee Goncalves, were with family at the hearing in Hippler’s courtroom earlier this month, as was Karen Laramie, mother of Madison Mogen, with family. The two mothers shared an embrace during a break in the morning’s proceedings.
Madison Mogen’s father, Benjamin Mogen, who did not attend the hearing, told the Idaho Statesman by email that, if forced to choose, he would support the prosecution’s pursuit of a death sentence for Kohberger.
“I would land on the side opposite of what he and his defense want,” he wrote.
The Goncalveses, meanwhile, have been outspoken in their support of the death penalty for Kohberger. In a statement last year through their attorney, they commended prosecutors for pursuing it and said that “no one was more deserving than the defendant in this case.”
After the hearing earlier this month, Steve Goncalves said in an interview with the Statesman that capital punishment is not always appropriate, but renewed his position that this case is an exception.
“When you get four people, and they’re in their own home, in their own beds, then you’ve got to draw a line,” he said. “These were girls that were just going to school. So I honestly believe he was hunting. I think he had thought about this crime immensely, planned it, and I think the facts will bear that out.”
Kohberger’s parents and two older sisters have stayed out of the spotlight during the nearly two years he has remained in police custody on suspicion of the violent crimes. Two days after Bryan Kohberger’s arrest in Pennsylvania in late December 2022, his family issued a statement through his prior public defender that said they “care deeply for the four families” whose loved ones died in the Moscow knife attack.
“There are no words that can adequately express the sadness we feel, and we pray each day for them,” read the Kohbergers’ statement. “We will continue to let the legal process unfold, and as a family, we will love and support our son and brother.”
Nearly 15 years earlier, Kohberger’s mother stated her objection to the death penalty in a letter to the editor published in eastern Pennsylvania’s Pocono Record newspaper. Like Idaho, Pennsylvania has capital punishment, but is one of the six U.S. states with a suspension on executions.
“State-sanctified murder is still just that — murder,” MaryAnn Kohberger wrote to her local paper.
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Judge rules on defense effort to drop death penalty in Bryan Kohberger’s Idaho murder case."
