Idaho Stabbings Trial Gets Change Of Venue

LOADING ERROR LOADING A judge on Friday granted defense attorneys’ request for a venue change in the high-profile trial of the man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in their off-campus house in 2022. Defense attorneys for Bryan Kohberger, the former criminology graduate student charged with four counts of murder in the brutal slayings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kermodle and Ethan Chapin, had argued a telephone survey showed residents speculating that people would “riot,” “burn the courthouse down” and possibly kill him if he was acquitted. On Monday, Judge John C. Judge agreed that Kohberger could not receive a fair trial in Latah County, where the killings took place, saying in court filings that local residents had been influenced by the widespread news coverage and social media speculation about the case, some of it “potentially prejudicial and false.” The judge noted that Kohberger has been the subject of “extensive negative publicity” since his Dec. 30, 2022, arrest after investigators said his DNA was found on a knife sheath found at the crime scene. Some respondents said they believed an acquittal would result in riots, an “uprising” and “anarchy,” and raised the possibility that people would exact “street justice” by killing Kohberger. Moving the trial to Boise, prosecutors said, would be inconvenient and expensive for court officials and witnesses who would have to travel hundreds of miles “only to face another jury pool with similarly high media exposure.” They also said that they believed immediate family members of the victims who are “constitutionally entitled” to attend the trial live closer to the Latah County courthouse than Boise.