Prosecutors aim to keep Bryan Kohberger murder trial in Moscow in ‘interest of justice’

Prosecutors in the capital murder case against Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four college students in Moscow, issued their formal opposition to moving the high-profile trial out of Latah County, including to Boise.

Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson, who is leading the prosecution of Kohberger and seeks the death penalty, argued in a new court filing that the defense was unconvincing in its push for a venue change for the scheduled June 2025 trial . The prosecution asked Judge John Judge of Idaho’s 2nd Judicial District in Latah County to rule against the defense’s venue change request.

“(The) defendant has failed to meet his burden of showing that change of venue in this case is necessary or convenient,” the filing read. 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.”

The filing was due to the court Monday but wasn’t made public until Tuesday afternoon. A hearing for oral arguments over a possible venue change is scheduled for Aug. 29 in Latah County.

Kohberger, 29, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students at an off-campus house in November 2022. The victims were seniors Madison Mogan and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle and freshman Ethan Chapin, both 20.

At the time, Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington. He was arrested nearly seven weeks after the homicides while visiting family in eastern Pennsylvania in December 2022.

Prosecution: ‘Interest of justice’ dictates trial in Moscow

The case has been closely watched during the 21 months since the crime happened in the rural Idaho college town. The shocking violence captured the nation’s attention and garnered top billing in newspapers, online and on local network and cable television news.

With the amplified level of media coverage, Kohberger’s defense, led by attorney Anne Taylor, argued that its client cannot receive a fair trial in Moscow, where the trial is currently planned. The defense attorneys hired a trial consultant to show how survey data from potential jurors reveals why moving Kohberger’s trial to Ada County — the state’s largest county, with more than 500,000 residents — would give him the best chance at an impartial jury pool.

But Thompson and prosecutor Ingrid Batey, from the Idaho Attorney General’s Office, countered that the defense’s use of the survey data is flawed in its efforts to prove that seating a capable jury in Latah County is not possible. And Judge’s standing gag order has effectively prevented pretrial publicity of the case from spoiling the local jury pool, they argued.

Expanding the number of Latah County residents who are asked to show up as potential jurors would help alleviate the potential issue, the filing read. Idaho law would otherwise dictate seating a jury from a nearby county — not one on the other side of the state, they wrote.

“Even if the court were to be persuaded that a fair and impartial jury could not be empaneled in Latah County, the court could … draw upon a jury pool from a neighboring county,” prosecutors argued.

At a hearing in January, Thompson indicated that shifting the trial to Lewis County — a population of about 3,500 people and 2,200 active voters, the Statesman previously reported — could be a potential fit if Judge felt a venue change was warranted. Nez Perce and Kootenai counties would make other alternatives, and be less inconvenient, Thompson said in Monday’s filing.

Moving the trial roughly 300 miles south to Boise, however, is not convenient, the filing read. And the defense’s request doesn’t contemplate the “interest of justice” for the four victims’ families — of whom the majority of immediate family members who may attend the trial live closer to Moscow than Boise, prosecutors wrote.

“(The) defendant’s motion should be denied,” Thompson and Batey wrote.