Boise, Idaho: Bryan Kohberger, the accused murderer of four University of Idaho students, may face the death penalty if convicted, as ruled by Judge Steven Hippler.
At a hearing this month in Boise, Idaho, suspect Bryan Kohberger’s defense team had tried to persuade District Court Judge Steven Hippler to block his trial, scheduled for August, from becoming a capital murder case.
But Hippler found Kohberger’s defense had failed in providing an alternative method of execution in Idaho to death by lethal injection or firing squad that is not “unduly painful,” Hippler said in his order Tuesday.
“Defendant must come forward with an alternative method,” he concluded. “He has not done so, thus foreclosing his claim.”
Idaho’s alternative to the death penalty for a first-degree murder conviction is life in prison with at least 10 years served before a subject becomes eligible for parole.
Prosecutors had said in court filings that there are four aggravating factors in the case against Kohberger, who turns 30 on Thursday, making the crime more severe and meriting the death penalty. They are that there are multiple victims; that the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel”; that the suspect exhibited “utter disregard for human life”; and that the suspect has “a propensity to commit murder which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society,” according to the filing.
A jury must concur that at least one aggravating factor pertains for a defendant to be sentenced to death. The jury must also unanimously agree to impose a death sentence.
At the hearing, Idaho Deputy Attorney General Jeff Nye argued against the defense’s claims that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it would be “dehumanizing” to have Kohberger sit on death row “for years and years and years” if the state does not have a viable method to administer an execution.
“You don’t get to short-circuit the whole thing that death is off the table,” Nye said, adding, “That’s not to say decades from now there’s not going to be a method to put him to death.”
In the early hours of November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed in an off-campus residence in Moscow, Idaho
On December 30, suspect Bryan Christopher Kohberger was arrested in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary.
