MOSCOW, Idaho — Attorneys for quadruple murder suspect Bryan Kohberger have filed documents that may allow them to nod to an autism spectrum disorder in an effort to get the death penalty off the table if convicted.
Kohberger is accused in the stabbing deaths of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves and Ethan Chapin at an off-campus home on Nov. 13, 2022. Chapin was a Mount Vernon native attending school in Idaho. Kohberger was a grad student at Washington State University at the time of the murders. The school is about a 10-mile drive across state lines to the crime scene in Moscow, Idaho.
Even if Kohberger was convicted on just one of the four counts of murder, in the state of Idaho, he could still face the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. In November 2024, a judge ruled that the death penalty could still be an option for Kohberger.
His defense recently filed a motion “to Strike Death Penalty RE: Autism Spectrum Disorder,” summaries of court documents show. A “Motion to Redact or Seal Newly Filed Records” was also entered “in support of their motion to strike death penalty.”
It’s unclear if Kohberger has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. It’s also unclear if his defense is seeking a diagnosis.
Defense has filed the motions in court, but those documents do not outline the nature of their defense.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, last week cited a state law providing “mental condition shall not be a defense to any charge of criminal conduct” except “expert evidence on the issues of any state of mind which is an element of the offense,” a court filing shows.
According to CNN, there has been very limited research about autism and crime. While research about people with autism or autism-like characteristics and crime is limited, studies have suggested they’re no more likely than people without autism to offend or encounter the criminal justice system, CNN said.
This filing is the defense’s latest attempt to exonerate their client or to strike the death penalty. The defense previously argued that Kohberger’s rights were violated when DNA was taken from the crime scene and then analyzed using investigative genetic genealogy (IGG).
Another motion focuses on what Kohberger’s defense team calls an “ideological shift” and “evolving standards” in the way Americans view the death penalty, according to CNN.
The defense has also focused on the case’s infamy, citing potentials for a biased jury.
Death row in Idaho
Idaho is just one of 27 states that still have the death penalty. Three of those states currently have a moratorium on executions.
Per the Idaho Code, every person guilty of first-degree murder will be “punished by death or by imprisonment for life.”
The Idaho Department of Corrections says only three people have been executed in Idaho since 1976, three years after the death penalty was reinstated after its abolition.
The last person executed by the state of Idaho was in 2012.
There are currently nine people on death row in Idaho, including one woman and Chad Daybell, who was convicted for murdering his first wife and his second wife’s two young children, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan. Daybell’s wife, Lori Vallow (his second wife), was also convicted for her roles in the deaths of her two children and her husband’s first wife. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Kohberger’s trial is expected to start in August.
A not-guilty plea has been entered on his behalf.
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