Several pretrial court proceeding deadlines were considered in the Bryan Kohberger case in a Wednesday hearing. Kohberger is the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
The prosecution presented a possible scheduling order with a possible trial date set for March 3, 2025. The trial date is the same day the judge suggested. The defense then reiterated that a trial date in March would likely be too soon and that the summer of 2025 was a more likely timeframe.
The other deadlines set by the prosecution’s scheduling order include deadlines for discovery, death penalty motions, alibi defense, jury questionnaires, expert disclosure and other pretrial proceedings.
The defense showed support for the discovery deadline being in September 2024. They shared that the rest of the scheduling order may not work with their timeframe due to the untimely nature of analyzing discovery.
The prosecution and defense also made preliminary arguments about a change in venue. The defense believes that a change in venue must be made due to a fair trial being found in Latah County being unlikely. The prosecution believes that this is a premature move.
The court decided on the date of May 14 to make official arguments regarding change of venue.
“I’ve been struggling with this for months,” Judge John Judge said about making a decision regarding change in venue.
Kohberger’s defense and the prosecution also argued over several different issues. They argued about the conditions of experts investigating the IGG materials (Investigative Genetic Genealogy) . The prosecution did not have a problem with experts looking at the materials, but they had a problem with the fact that the defense did not name the experts.
The defense argued that not naming the experts was done out of consistency. They argued that many of the people that have been in the court documents from the defense were also not named, and that naming the experts now would break that consistency.
The prosecution wanted the experts to be named due to the sensitive nature of the materials, and the defense assured that the experts would follow the conditions of the protective order surrounding the materials.
The judge doubted the relevance of IGG material investigation and didn’t believe that it was relevant to the trial. The defense assured the court that they would not use the materials and investigations to try and find other investigative leads.
There is still no official trial date.
Ben DeWitt can be reached at [email protected] or on X @BenDeWitt321