BOISE, Idaho – Convicted killer Bryan Kohberger wants a different judge to preside over his push for a new trial and wants the case to be heard in the town where the murders were committed.
Kohberger pleaded guilty to killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022 and is serving consecutive life sentences.
This summer, he filed a civil motion for post-conviction relief. It’s a rare legal move in which Kohberger claims his guilty plea was made under false pretenses and with bad advice from his attorneys.
Judge Steven Hippler of Ada County presided over the case and sentenced Kohberger. Now, he’s the judge scheduled to preside over the effort to have that guilty plea withdrawn.
In the motion to disqualify, Kohberger’s attorney says Judge Hippler rejected the defense team’s concerns about the timeline of the case and the defense team’s request for a continuance. The motion implies that the rejection contributed to Kohberger pleading guilty six days later.
“That chronology may or may not establish, by itself, that his plea was constitutionally defective,” the motion says. :That question remains to be investigated and adjudicated. But neither can the chronology be sanitized nor ignored.”
Kohberger’s team also points to the fact that even after asking for that continuance, Kohberger’s defense attorney Anne Taylor said at the time of the guilty plea that she had adequate time to prepare the case.
‘Faceless Coward’
In the motion to disqualify, Kohberger’s attorneys also point to comments Judge Hippler made to Kohberger during sentencing.
“The Court referred to Kohberger as a ‘faceless coward’ and stated that the individual who ‘slithered’ through the sliding door now stood before the world ‘unmasked'”, the motion says.”The Court later stated that it could identify nothing redeeming about Kohberger because his conduct had buried anything ‘good or intrinsically human,’ and called him ‘the worst of the worst.'”
Court rules allow the judge to condemn the crimes and the offender, but Kohberger’s attorney says Hippler’s comments went beyond the scope of those rules.
“The judge who may now determine Kohberger’s credibility has not merely formed a negative opinion of him,” the motion asserts. “He has publicly used intensely personal language to describe him and has separately questioned his capacity for truthfulness. That entire record informs what a reasonable observer would perceive.”
The motion says Hippler would be forced to rule if decisions he made in the lead-up to the trial were incorrect and would serve as a factual basis for allowing Kohberger to withdraw his plea.
In a separate motion, Kohberger’s attorney wants the case moved out of Ada County and moved back to Latah County where the crimes occured.
The criminal case was moved to Boise because of the intense public attention on the case and concerns about being able to pick an unbiased jury.
Those concerns, Kohberger’s team contends, do not apply in this case.
“Local publicity and jury-pool concerns that justified moving the criminal trial from Latah County therefore do not carry the same force here,” attorneys wrote. “That is to say the only reasons the proceedings were transferred to Ada county in the criminal case are wholly absent in the civil [post-conviction relief] case.”
Attorneys point to the fact that legal counsel on both sides of the issue, along with most of the witnesses, live in or near Latah County.
A hearing on the motion to disqualify is scheduled for October 15th. There’s no date set for the motion to change venue.
If the case continues to move forward, Kohberger will have a chance to argue for post-conviction relief next summer.
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