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JURORS warn that the public will burn the courthouse to the ground and riot if Bryan Kohberger isn’t found guilty of murdering four university students, according to a recent filing.
Kohberger, 29, has been charged in the brutal killing of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin at their off-campus home near the University of Idaho on November 13, 2022.
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His defense team has been pushing to move the trial from Latah County to Ada County – nearly 300 miles away – with a hearing to argue the motion scheduled for August 29.
The defense has surveyed hundreds of potential jurors, asking them about their knowledge of the case, which gained national headlines after it took nearly seven weeks for an arrest to be made.
Because of this, the prosecution argued that moving the trial wouldn’t produce jurors who were unfamiliar with the case.
A recent filing from the defense produced the answers from the survey, revealing that Latah County residents recognized their own biases in their answers when asked what they believed would happen if Kohberger wasn’t convicted.
“They’d burn the courthouse down. Outrage would be a mild description,” read one response.
“They would probably find him and kill him,” read another.
A third read: “There would likely be a riot and he wouldn’t last long outside because someone would do the good ole’ boy justice.”
“Riots, parents would take care of him.”
However, prospective jurors in Ada County gave much different answers when asked the same question.
“They would go on with life as always,” said one person.
“I think they would take it well,” said another.
A third said: “I don’t know if there would be super strong feelings.”
In the filing, Kohberger’s defense team pointed to the two recent, high-profile cases of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell, whose trials were moved from Fremont County to Ada County due to the publicity.
The date for Kohberger’s trial is currently scheduled for June 2025, however, Latah County District Judge John Judge hasn’t revealed a specific date.
It’s unclear if the defense’s push for a new venue will delay the trial date at this time.
At the time of the murders, Kohberger was a criminology PhD student at Washington State University – only 10 miles from the home in Moscow, Idaho, where the students were killed.
In May 2023, a not-guilty plea was entered on Kohberger’s behalf on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.
If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
CELL DATA ACTIVITY
The prosecution is aiming to pin Kohberger to the crime using his cellphone activity.
His phone was traced near the off-campus Moscow home 12 times in the months leading up to the murders, the prosecution said.
University of Idaho murders timeline
On November 13, 2022, a brutal home invasion claimed the lives of four University of Idaho students.
Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death in their Moscow, Idaho, off-campus home.
A six-week manhunt ensued as cops searched for a suspect.
On December 28, 2022, Bryan Kohberger, 29, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania – 2,500 miles away from the crime scene.
He was taken into custody and has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
Kohberger, a former criminal justice student at Washington State University, has been linked to the crime scene through phone records, his car’s location, and DNA evidence found at the home where the murders took place.
The house was demolished in December 2023 despite backlash from the victims’ families.
Kohberger is being held at Latah County Jail while he awaits trial.
Kohberger’s phone was also pinged in the area near the home once a few hours after the students were killed, according to court documents.
However, his defense said the cellphone data would show that he wasn’t at the Moscow home when the victims were killed.
Instead, they argued that expert testimony would prove that Kohberberg’s phone was south of Pullman, Washington, and west of Moscow on the night of the murders.
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