MOSCOW, Idaho – Attorneys defending accused quadruple killer Bryan Kohberger made a slew of motions in court this week, arguing their client should not face the death penalty if convicted of killing four University of Idaho students.
Kohberger is charged with killing Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle at an off-campus home in 2022.
His trial is set for next summer.
If convicted, the court then moves to the death penalty phase where both sides argue to a jury if Kohberger would be put to death or face another sentence, such as life in prison.
The prosecution will have to prove aggravating factors that make Kohberger eligible for the death penalty.
Kohberger’s defense teams filed several motions this week, arguing that certain aggravating factors should not be presented to the jury. The arguments together are made in an overall motion to strike the state’s intent to seek the death penalty.
Among those arguments:
The defense asked for the court to throw out the charge of felony murder as an aggravating factor. The defense points to the prosecution’s assertion that the murder was committed in the course of a burglary. Attorneys point to case law which they say, “A felony murder could not be based upon a burglary whose sole aim is murder.”The defense also wants to the court to strike “future dangerousness” as an aggravating factor. Attorneys say it’s too vague and too difficult to prove.The defense team doesn’t want the prosecution to be able to use the “HAC aggravator”. That’s the aggravating factor based on the presumption that the crime was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.” The defense argues that this is “unconstitutionally vague” and that this as an aggravating factor has been struck down by courts in other states.The defense also asks the judge to strike the “multiple victims aggravator”. Attorneys argue that this as an aggravating factor “ranks” murders by how many people were killed. “What multiple victims tells us, if we take away other aggravators, is that a single dead person is not as valuable as two,” they write.
With all of these motions together, the defense then made a motion asking or the death penalty to be taken off the table altogether. The defense argues that the decision gives too much power to the prosecutor, who is the only person who can file an intent to seek the death penalty.
The motion brings up the argument of the death penalty as cruel and unusual and being administered in a way that is “arbitrary and capricious.”
The defense argues that without a “neutral fact finder” to determine if the death penalty is being sought fairly, “we have the arbitrariness of the current system, where prosecutors are the driving force behind where death is sought. Without this check, the freakish and wanton nature of the death penalty cannot be resolved. Without this check, this nation continues to fail to live up to the promises explicitly listed in the Constitution to protect its citizens from the death penalty.”
The prosecution will now file its own motions to refute the defense claims and assert its own arguments for why the death penalty is appropriate in this case.
Judge John Judge scheduled a hearing on the matter in November.
Judge is still considering previous defense motions to move the trial out of Latah County. He heard arguments last week, but did not set a date for when he would issue his decision.
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