No trial date was set for Brian Kohberger, accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022, during a contentious hearing this week in which Kohberger’s defense argued they will have too much evidence to go over once the state has finished discovery.
Public defender Anne Taylor offered a June 25, 2025, start date for the trial, nearly four months later than the prosecution’s March 3, 2025, date, which the judge also favored, the Idaho Statesman reported.
“Not only do we have a huge volume of information, the way I’m getting it is completely disorganized,” Taylor told Judge John Judge. “And it’s like if you wanted to play 52-card pickup with 100,000 decks of cards and throw them in the air, and I have to go figure out how to put them together.”
Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson told the court that the prosecution has handed over 95 percent of the information the defense has requested and done so in a timely manner.
Ultimately, Judge agreed to delay setting a date until he has decided on a motion for a change of venue requested by the defense in January, and he set a hearing on that motion for May 14. He said a brief, witness list, and evidence to be presented at the hearing must be filed by April 17 and that the state has until May 1 to file a response presenting its witness list and evidence.
The hearing will be streamed live on the court’s YouTube channel.
022924 Order Setting Deadlines Hearing by kc wildmoon on Scribd
Judge also told the defense they have until April 17 to file a notice if they intend to present an alibi, which by Idaho law must include “the specific place or places at which the defendant claims to have been at the time of the alleged offense and the names and addresses of the witnesses upon whom he intends to rely to establish such alibi.”
The defense has previously said that Kohberger, 29, was just driving around at the time Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves were brutally stabbed to death in their rental just off the university campus in Moscow.
Judge set two more deadlines after Wednesday’s hearing: September 6 for prosecutors to hand over all discovery to the defense and January 9, 2025, for the defense to hand over its discovery to the state.
Judge also modified a previous order, which is sealed, allowing the defense team and its genetic genealogy experts — three of them — to see specific material investigators used to create a family tree that eventually led to Kohberger’s arrest.
Investigators linked DNA found on a knife sheath found at the scene first to Kohberger’s father and then, after they had taken a DNA swab from him during his arrest in December 2022, to Kohberger himself.
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[Featured image: FILE – Bryan Kohberger, second from left, is escorted out of the courtroom as two of his attorneys, Anne Taylor, second from right, and Jay Logsdon, right, confer following a hearing on September 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, Pool, File)]
