Idaho judge considers whether to hold quadruple murder trial in small university town or elsewhere

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Attorneys for the man charged in the 2022 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students asked a judge to move the trial to a larger city during a hearing Thursday, citing the widespread media coverage of the case and the impact that coverage can have on potential juror bias.

Bryan Kohberger’s defense team says strong emotions in the close-knit community and constant news coverage will make it impossible to find an impartial jury in the university town of Moscow, Idaho. They want the trial, set for June 2025, to be moved from Moscow to Boise or another large city. But prosecutors say any problems with potential bias can be resolved by simply calling a larger pool of potential jurors and questioning them carefully.

Kohberger, a former criminal justice student at Washington State University, which is across the state line in Pullman, faces four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.

The four University of Idaho students were killed sometime in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, in a rental house near the campus.

Police arrested Kohberger six weeks later at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was spending winter break.

The killings stunned students at both universities and left the small city of Moscow deeply shaken. The case also spurred a flurry of news coverage, much of which Kohberger's defense team says was inflammatory and left the community strongly biased against their client.

Defense attorney Elisa Massoth's first witness was James “Todd” Murphy, the president of media tracking company Truescope. Murphy testified that news coverage of the case has been more saturated in Latah County, where the university town is located, than it has been in other parts of the state.

Latah County has about 3% of the state’s population but the media exposure to the case was measured at about 36%, Murphy said. That compares to Ada County, where Boise is located, which had about 34% exposure and roughly 26% of the state’s population.

Amani El-Alayli, a professor at Eastern Washington University who researches social cognition and bias, told the judge that studies have shown that people who are exposed to publicity about a case are more likely to render a guilty verdict at trial because of the way the human brain processes information.

That's partly because people are less likely to think critically about information when they are just casually consuming the news, she said, and partly because of “classic conditioning,” a type of unconscious learning where the brain creates associations between certain stimuli and responses. Conditioning can happen when people repeatedly see the defendant's name or photo next to words like “murder” or “students killed,” she said, or when they hear a name connected to something they had an emotional response too — like the fear that another crime might happen, or sadness that someone died.

“We've seen the pictures with these ominous headlines — that connection can't help but be created,” El-Alayli said. “People aren't trying to be biased. It's just that when we're in a mood, those moods filter the information that we take in.”

Seeing authority figures like a police chief or even someone with a commanding presence say that a person is a suspect can also create a bias, she said, particularly in small towns where potential jurors might personally know the authority figure making the claim.

There's no known method to undo that bias once it is created, El-Alayli said, and carefully questioning jurors or giving them instructions to ignore things they have previously heard or read about the case generally isn't very effective.

Defendants have a constitutional right to a fair trial, and that requires finding jurors that can be impartial and haven't already made up their minds about the guilt or innocence of the person accused. But when the defense team hired a company to survey Latah County residents, 98% percent of the respondents said they recognized the case and 70% of that group said they had already formed the opinion that Kohberger is guilty. More than half of the respondents with that opinion also said nothing would change their mind, according to defense court filings.

Bryan Edelman, a trial consultant and the cofounder of Trial Innovations, which conducted the the study, also testified for the defense. He said that since November 2022, there have been roughly 440 articles published about the case in Latah County's local news outlets — including The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, The Lewiston Tribune, and the University of Idaho's student newspaper the Argonaut. The local population is about only 40,000 people, he said.

The defense attorneys provided more details about Edelman's survey in a court document filed earlier this month. Some of the respondents made dire predictions, saying that if Kohberger is acquitted, “There would likely be a riot and he wouldn't last long outside because someone would do the good ole boy justice,” “They'd burn the courthouse down,” and “Riots, parents would take care of him.”

Prosecutors told the judge that the survey didn't provide strong enough evidence to justify moving the trial. Special Assistant Attorney General Ingrid Batey said the survey data showed that at some points, Ada County actually had higher levels of media coverage than Latah County.

“The fact is, your honor, this case has media coverage everywhere,” Batey said, suggesting that bias and pressure could be handled by calling larger jury pools and by barring the public from some parts of the jury selection process and other hearings. The court can summon 1,800 potential jurors in Latah County just as easily as it can in Ada County, Batey told the judge.

Moving the trial across the state would be expensive and force court staffers, witnesses, experts, law enforcement officers and victims' family members to make an inconvenient trip to the new location, she said.

But Taylor reminded the judge that Kohberger's constitutional rights are at stake.

“His right to a fair trial is as important to our right to free speech, our right to bear arms, our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” said defense attorney Anne Taylor, “and the right to a fair trial cannot happen in Latah County.”

The judge said he would review the law and all of the evidence before making a ruling, saying it would likely be one of the hardest professional decisions he will ever have to make. “I'll do my best,” the judge said. “It's a challenge."

“There was some really important things to think about on both sides,” he said, "and that's what I'm going to do.”