BOISE, Idaho (Court TV) — Bryan Kohberger says he wants hearings moved back to Latah County as he fights to withdraw his guilty plea, but prosecutors say they don’t even think he deserves a hearing.
Bryan Kohberger appears at his sentencing hearing, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool)
Kohberger, 31, pleaded guilty to burglary and four counts of murder in the deaths of four University of Idaho students. Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Kaylee Goncalves were found stabbed to death in an off-campus home on Nov. 13, 2022. Kohberger was sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 10 years after admitting to the killings.
One year after his sentencing, Kohberger filed a handwritten petition asking to withdraw his plea and go to trial. Kohberger wrote that he is innocent and that his attorneys misled him before he accepted the plea. An evidentiary hearing was scheduled for June 17, 2027, with trial judge Steven Hippler presiding.
Prosecutors filed documents this week saying there is no reason to have a hearing at all. “Petitioner has not made a substantial factual showing by affidavit, deposition or otherwise that the asserted basis for relief raises a substantial doubt about the reliability of the finding of guilt and that such basis or bases for relief could not, in the exercise of due diligence, have been presented earlier,” Latah County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Keith Scholl wrote. Kohberger “failed to show that his counsel’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.”
Kohberger’s newly appointed appellate attorneys have filed several motions ahead of next year’s hearing, including one to disqualify Hippler. “This motion does not rest upon one adverse ruling, one harsh statement, or the mere fact that the judge who presided over Bryan Kohberger’s criminal case has been assigned to his postconviction proceeding,” Kohberger’s attorneys wrote. “It rests upon the extraordinary convergence of all of them.”
The motion accuses Hippler of denying Kohberger’s trial attorneys much-needed extra time to address voluminous discovery, and alleges that the judge’s failure to award more time directly led to the plea agreement.
“The Court…denied additional time,” the motion says. “The State continued to seek death. The trial remained on course. Six days later, there was no trial. Kohberger pleaded guilty. That chronology may or may not establish, by itself, that his plea was constitutionally defective.”
Kohberger’s appellate attorneys also said that Hippler’s comments about Kohberger at sentencing were problematic and should preclude him from presiding over future proceedings. “Judge Hippler publicly questioned whether Kohberger was even ‘capable of speaking the truth’ and predicted that any explanation from him would consist of ‘self-serving and aggrandizing untruthful bits.’ Those statements are fundamentally different from believing Kohberger committed terrible crimes or even deserved severe punishment. They are forward-looking judgments about his credibility. And credibility may now be at the center of this proceeding.”
Kohberger has also asked that future proceedings be moved back to Latah County, where the victims were killed and where initial proceedings were held. The defense previously sought a change of venue, citing intense publicity and the county’s small population. The trial was set for Ada County, where Kohberger entered his plea and was sentenced. He argues the move would benefit both witnesses and attorneys.
Hippler previously scheduled a status conference to discuss issues before the evidentiary hearing on June 3, 2027.
