Ajudge will decide whether Bryan Kohberger will face the death penalty in his upcoming murder trial after the prosecution and defense debated the issue at a hearing on Thursday.
Kohberger, 29, is facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary. He is accused of fatally stabbing University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in an off-campus residence in 2022.
Kohberger could face the death penalty if convicted. The defense has objected to the state’s intention to seek the death penalty in a series of motions.
The prosecution and defense presented their arguments to District Judge Steven Hippler on Thursday. After listening to both sides, Hippler said he would take the matter under advisement and issue a ruling at a later date.
Anne Taylor, Kohberger’s lawyer, argued that sitting on death row for decades without knowledge of if or how he will be executed could induce anxiety.
“I don’t believe that our Constitution allows for us to move forward and make him sit on death row for years and years, and the way Idaho is doing it right now isn’t really working,” Taylor said. “It’s not a realistic option, I think, to have him sit on death row and say Idaho’s going to figure out how to kill you at some point in the future in a way that isn’t cruel and unusual and a violation of rights.”
Taylor noted that the primary method of execution in the state was lethal injection, but the state also approved use of the firing squad after experiencing difficulties obtaining the drugs needed to administer a lethal injection. She also argued that the firing squad has not been built yet.
The prosecution argued that there could be alternative methods of execution in the future.
“You don’t know decades from now what an alternative might be, maybe they’ll have a better argument decades from now on the method of execution because maybe there will be another method,” Deputy Attorney General Jeffery Nye said.
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I realized I had never seen if there was much in the way of a motive, so I went searching to see if one had been uncovered.
I came across this:
While a motive remains unclear, veteran forensic psychologist Dr Joni Johnston believes Kohberger - should he be found to be the culprit - may have been motivated to kill by deep-seated anger, resentment, and jealousy, based on her analysis of public reports.
Speaking to The U.S. Sun, Dr Johnston explained: "My theory is that this is an attack motivated by rage and anger, and almost a need for revenge.
“I don’t mean necessarily that there’s this kind of need for anger or revenge against these [victims] specifically … but it could be a murder-by-proxy thing.”
Stopping short of suggesting the suspect may have been an incel - or an involuntary celibate - Johnston says the sole suspect may have harbored resentment toward his female victims in particular.
“The victims he chose may symbolize what he doesn’t have and can’t get - and so he’s angry about that,” she said.
“These are young, attractive girls living in a college town … in his mind, he needs to take power, take control, and get revenge on these individuals because of who and what they symbolize.”
There is also this potential piece of evidence:
Anow-deleted Instagram account that authorities believe belonged to Bryan Kohberger, the suspect in the University of Idaho murders, followed the three female victims of the attack, according to a report citing sources in the investigation.
Investigators haven’t said if the victims knew the suspect, however People magazine has claimed he reached out one of the female victims repeatedly via Instagram messenger.
Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student in criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary in connection with the slayings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in the neighboring town of Moscow, Idaho.
All four bodies were discovered in an off-campus residence the three women shared on November 13. Chapin had been sleeping over with his girlfriend, Kernodle.
…
“He slid into one of the girls’ DMs several times, but she didn’t respond,” a source close to the investigation told the outlet. “Basically, it was just him saying, ‘Hey, how are you?’ But he did it again and again.”
“These weren’t angry messages, these weren’t even sexual messages—these were just him saying ‘Hey’ and when she didn’t respond saying ‘Hey’ again and again and again,” Steve Helling, senior crime reporter at People, explained to NewsNation. “He never expressed any anger, you know, ‘why aren’t you responding to me?’ or ‘you stuck-up b-word’; that’s not what he was doing. He was just trying to make some sort of contact.”
“There’s no indication that he was getting frustrated with her lack of response,” the source said. “But he was definitely persistent.”