Bryan Kohberger‘s new lawyer has suggested he has fresh information about the Idaho murders, as the convicted killer seeks to retract his guilty pleas.
Kohberger pleaded guilty last year to fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students, Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20, at their Moscow home in November 2022.
The now-31-year-old former criminology student has retained a new lawyer, New York-based attorney Jason Goldman, who released a statement to People on Monday saying that there is more to the case than previously thought.
Goldman said he would ‘simply caution against assuming that everything the public believes it knows about this case tells the complete story.’
He added that ‘there remain serious questions about how this case reached its present posture and a hearing will provide an appropriate forum to address those issues’.
Kohberger is attempting to rescind his guilty pleas, and has filed a motion seeking to dismiss Judge Steven Hippler, the Ada County magistrate who ordered him to serve four life sentences for the killings.
He filed a petition last week seeking post-conviction relief which would allow him to withdraw his guilty plea and send the case back to trial – potentially putting the death penalty back on the table.
‘My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,’ Kohberger said in a statement to The New York Times last week.
Bryan Kohberger’s lawyer has suggested he has new information about the Idaho murders – as his client seeks to retract his guilty pleas
Kohberger pleaded guilty last year to killing Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, and Xana Kernodle in an off-campus apartment in Moscow, Idaho , on November 13, 2022
Kohberger filed a handwritten petition last month asking the court to let him take back his plea, saying his attorneys manipulated him into making the deal by promising him better prison conditions and scaring him about the quality of life on death row.
The convicted killer offered only a few details in elaboration, saying they failed to disclose or review evidence that might have helped his case during plea discussions.
Kohberger has since been appointed a new attorney, Greg Rauch, along with Goldman.
Judge Hippler did not grant Kohberger a hearing on his claims that his guilty plea should be withdrawn. Instead, Hippler scheduled in a date for next June in case he determines an evidentiary hearing is warranted.
Hippler told prosecutors and Kohberger’s attorney that they must ‘strictly adhere’ to the Idaho Rules of Court Procedure, particularly the sections detailing what evidence is admissible in court.
The judge also detailed how both sides should object to evidence that they feel is not admissible.
Hippler said both sides should disclose any potential witnesses, including experts, by the start of February. He also set a status conference for next June.
Anyone who doesn’t comply with the court’s order could be subject to sanctions, Hippler wrote.
Kohberger’s new attorney Greg Rauch has focused on Hippler (pictured), who sentenced Kohberger to life in prison without parole after Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders last year and took issue with Hippler referring to his client as a ‘faceless coward’
Goldman said the separate motion seeking to dismiss Hippler from the case was ‘not about attacking the Court nor asking for special treatment’.
‘It is about ensuring that the serious constitutional questions now before the Court are heard in a forum whose impartiality and neutrality cannot be questioned,’ Goldman said.
For this reason, he explained, ‘it would be an inherent conflict for the same presiding judge to decide these very issues.’
Rauch also previously argued that Hippler’s statements about Kohberger, including describing him as a ‘faceless coward’, are a cause for concern.
‘Those statements are fundamentally different from believing Kohberger committed terrible crimes or deserved severe punishment,’ Rauch said.
‘They are forward-looking judgments about his credibility. And credibility may now be at the center of this proceeding,’ the motion said.
The attorney argued it was not simply ‘one harsh statement’ that was leading to the request for dismissal, also noting that Hippler was assigned to the post-conviction hearing despite presiding over the criminal trial.
‘The question is not merely whether Judge Hippler has formed strong views about Kohberger,’ Rauch said.
‘The question is whether an informed and reasonable observer could question the impartiality of having the same judge.’
Kohberger accepted a plea deal last July, just before his trial was set to begin, and in turn, escaped a potential death penalty for stabbing the students all to death at their home in Moscow, Idaho (pictured)
Kohberger’s latest move came just days before a new three-part Netflix documentary series, The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare.
Kaylee’s mother, father and sister, Kristi, Steve and Alivea Goncalves; Xana’s father, Jeff Kernodle, and her little sister, Jazzmin Kernodle, were featured in the new show, among friends of the victims and law enforcement officials involved in the case.
After hearing about Kohberger’s latest legal move, Alivea – who slammed her sister’s killer during victim impact statements last year in court – said she wants him ‘no longer breathing on this earth.’
Alivea, 29, told NBC’s Today earlier this month exactly how she feels now that Kohberger is trying to rewrite his past.
‘The fact that someone locked behind bars still has the ability to revictimize their victims, that’s something that isn’t just very easy to get over,’ she told the outlet.
‘This will never be over for us until the defendant is no longer breathing on this earth.’
The Goncalves family has remained vocal since the day they found out they lost Kaylee and her friends.
Alivea previously unleashed fury at Kohberger in the courtroom after he accepted a plea deal.
‘I won’t stand here and give you what you want. I won’t give you tears. Instead, I will call you what you are: sociopath, psychopath, murderer,’ she said in the face-to-face courtroom confrontation that was broadcast live.
‘The truth is you’re basic. You’re a textbook case of insecurity disguised as control. You spent months preparing and still all it took was my sister and a sheath,’ she added. ‘You’re as dumb as they come. Stupid, dumb, weak, dirty.’
