Judge in Bryan Kohberger’s Idaho student murder case issues evidence challenge decisions
A DNA technique that prosecutors said first identified Bryan Kohberger as the suspect in the University of Idaho student homicides did not jeopardize the investigation, and its use by the FBI does not justify suppressing any evidence collected after that, the judge in the high-profile murder case ruled Wednesday.
In addition, the defense’s assertion that detectives lied or withheld information from a prior judge to obtain search warrants was unfounded and does not support holding a separate hearing to challenge that evidence, Idaho 4th District Judge Steven Hippler decided.
In spite of allegations otherwise from Kohberger’s attorneys, police did not violate their client’s constitutional rights during their investigation into the November 2022 student stabbing deaths, he wrote in his long-awaited court orders.
Police and prosecutors have said that Kohberger’s DNA was found on a leather knife sheath found next to one of the four victims at an off-campus home in Moscow where they were found dead. Through analysis — including the process known as IGG, or investigative genetic genealogy — and comparing the sheath DNA directly to Kohberger once he was taken into custody, they landed on a statistical match, investigators wrote in the probable cause affidavit for his arrest.
“In sum, defendant’s argument finds no support under the law,” Hippler wrote. “Any privacy interest he can claim in this DNA was abandoned along with the sheath, to which he claims no ownership or knowledge. Even if no such abandonment occurred, defendant has not demonstrated it is reasonable to recognize a privacy interest in DNA left at a crime scene.”
His rulings, across four opinions, represent some of the biggest decisions from the Ada County judge since taking over the closely watched case last fall when it moved from Moscow to Boise. Hippler took nearly four weeks before issuing his decisions after a pair of hearings — a mix of public and closed-door sessions — held last month.
The judge’s orders represented a clean sweep for the prosecution over the defense’s effort to exclude a variety of evidence from Kohberger’s capital murder trial. The evidence included his DNA, all data from his cellphone and several digital accounts, and any evidence from his car, apartment and his parents’ home in Pennsylvania where he was arrested in late December 2022.
Kohberger, 30, a former Washington State University graduate student of criminal justice and criminology, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and a count of felony burglary in the fatal stabbing of the four students in Moscow. He could face the death penalty if convicted by a jury.
The victims were Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington. The three women lived in an off-campus home on King Road with two other women who went physically unharmed in the early morning attack. Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend and stayed over for the night.
No evidence dropped from summer murder trial
Kohberger’s public defense team alleged that Moscow city police investigating the homicides intentionally made false statements or recklessly omitted information from a judge for various search warrants. Included among what was withheld from the magistrate’s probable cause determination was IGG’s role in the case, and discovery of blood DNA from two still-unknown males found at the crime scene, lead defense attorney Anne Taylor told the court last month.
The FBI’s use of IGG with public ancestry databases to build a family tree to zero in on a suspect was not identified in the probable cause affidavit, and prosecutors didn’t disclose it for seven months after Kohberger’s arrest. Federal agents leveraged four such databases for the advanced DNA technique, but only two of those work with law enforcement, the defense revealed last month.
Prosecutors disputed that doing so violated the law, and instead merely broke terms of service and loose internal guidelines. The FBI declined to comment to the Statesman, citing the active case and gag order.
As a result, Kohberger’s attorneys filed for what’s known as a Franks hearing so they could challenge the issuance of the search warrants in an effort to suppress the evidence obtained with them. The request is akin to appealing the magistrate judge’s probable cause finding, and is rarely granted, legal experts previously told the Idaho Statesman. Prosecutors contested the claims and opposed Hippler holding the hearing.
For last month’s hearings, Kohberger’s attorneys subpoenaed two Moscow police officers, Cpl. Brett Payne, who signed the probable cause affidavit, and Forensic Detective Lawrence Mowery, who filed for most of the case’s search warrants, to testify.
Other witnesses at the two-day hearing included California-based IGG experts Leah Larkin and Bicka Barlow, for the defense, and Forensic Services Director Matthew Gamette and lab manager Rylene Nowlin from the Idaho State Police crime lab in Meridian.
At the hearing, Hippler challenged Kohberger’s defense team on arguments filed with the court under seal that police had lied to obtain the warrants concerning their client. His ruling Wednesday confirmed what he signaled about the matter at the two-day hearing, and offered deeper legal basis for his decision.
“The court concludes that the search warrants are not invalid based on the omission of defendant’s identification through IGG because that information would have only bolstered probable cause for the searches,” Hippler wrote. “As to the remaining challenges, the court finds defendant has failed to carry his preliminary burden under Franks and, therefore, denies his motion.”
Based on an alleged lack of specificity in what detectives sought through search warrants, the defense had sought to suppress evidence law enforcement obtained for Kohberger’s AT&T cellphone records, as well as Amazon, Google and Apple iCloud accounts. But Hippler ruled Wednesday that any deficiencies in the named warrants and their returns amounted to “technical errors” and did not justify suppression from trial.
Furthermore, Hippler denied the defense’s efforts to exclude statements Kohberger made to police when he was initially taken into custody but had not been read his Miranda rights, and items taken from him when he was booked into jail, including a DNA swab of his cheek. Evidence seized from Kohberger’s car, apartment and his parents’ home also will be available to the prosecution at trial, Hippler ruled.
Kohberger’s trial is set for this summer, starting with jury selection on July 30. His next court appearance before Hippler is scheduled for April 9.
This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 2:12 PM with the headline "Judge in Bryan Kohberger’s Idaho student murder case issues evidence challenge decisions."
