Lawyers for the man charged in the stabbings of four University of Idaho students in 2022 say the pressure to convict him is so great that some Latah County residents predict lynchings or riots if he is acquitted.
Bryan Kohberger’s Defense attorney Elisa Massoth made that argument in a filing this month, saying the only way he can get a fair trial is to move it to a new location.
Second District John Judge will preside over a hearing on the motion for a change of venue Thursday morning. If he grants it, the lawsuit, planned for June 2025could be moved from Moscow to Boise or another larger city in Idaho.
Kohberger, a former Washington State University criminal justice student who lives across the state line in Pullman, faces four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Gonçalves.
The four University of Idaho students were murdered in a rental home near campus sometime in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022. Kaylee’s father, Steve Goncalves, told “48 Hours” Last year he said there was “evidence she woke up and tried to escape” and that she was “trapped” based on the way the bed was positioned.
Police Arrest Kohberger Six weeks later, at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was spending the winter holidays.
The killings stunned students at both universities and left the small city of Moscow deeply shaken. They also generated extensive media coverage, much of which Kohberger’s defense team says was inflammatory and left the tight-knit community deeply prejudiced against their client.
Kohberger first requested a change of venue in January, when his attorney Anne Taylor wrote in a court document that a fair and impartial jury could be found in Latah County “due to the extensive, inflammatory pretrial publicity, the allegations made by the media about Mr. Kohberger that are inadmissible at his trial, the small size of the community, the obscene nature of the alleged crimes, and the seriousness of the charges against Mr. Kohberger.”
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Defendants have a constitutional right to a fair trial, and that requires finding jurors who can be impartial and who have not already formed an opinion about the guilt or innocence of the accused. But when the defense team hired a firm to interview Latah County residents, 98 percent of respondents said they recognized the case, and 70 percent of that group said they had already formed an opinion that Kohberger is guilty. More than half of respondents with that opinion also said nothing would change their opinion, according to defense filings.
According to the documents, some respondents also made gloomy predictions. They said that if Kohberger is acquitted, “there would probably be a riot and he wouldn’t last long outside because someone would do the good old boy justice,” “they would burn down the courthouse” and “riot, parents would take care of him.”
Prosecutors wanted the judge to throw out the survey because it didn’t include all the data about people who refused to respond to the survey. Prosecutor Bill Thompson and Special Assistant Attorney General Ingrid Batey said in court papers that there are other ways to ensure a fair trial than moving the proceedings hundreds of miles away, including expanding the pool of potential jurors to include neighboring counties.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, a change of venue would be expensive and would require court officials, witnesses, experts, law enforcement officers and relatives of victims to make a difficult journey to the new location.
Media attention to the investigation into the murders was not limited to local and national news outlets. True crime-style television shows, books, podcasts and YouTube broadcasts also focused on the case, as did social media groups on sites like Facebook, Reddit and TikTok.
According to Taylor, the media coverage has “completely spoiled” the atmosphere in Latah County.
“Once police arrested Mr. Kohberger, the public was prepared to, and has done, smear him without regard for the constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence and the right to an impartial jury and a fair trial,” Taylor wrote. “The media coverage of Mr. Kohberger has been relentless and highly inflammatory.”
Earlier this year, Taylor argued in court that prosecutors withheld information from the defense team, claiming that Latah County prosecutors failed to provide full video that allegedly shows Kohberger’s vehicle at the residence where the four students were killed. Taylor said the defense received only “portions” of the video, which is described in the probable cause affidavit that was used to arrest Kohberger, and said the video had no sound.
Goncalves’ family said in the spring that they were frustrated by the length of time it had taken for the case to move through the justice system.
“This case is turning into a hamster wheel of motions, hearings and delayed decisions,” the family said in a statement.
