(NewsNation) — Lawyers for Bryan Kohberger, the former graduate student accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death in 2022, returned to court Wednesday after prosecutors argued a survey violated a gag order.
Kohberger has been charged in the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in an off-campus housing unit.
Kohberger’s public defender, Anne Taylor, recently drew the ire of prosecutors and judge after she hired a psychologist, Dr. Bryan Edelman, to conduct a phone survey of local residents, asking how much they know about the criminal case against the 29-year-old Kohberger.
Attorneys continued to argue Wednesday over questions that were asked of 400 Latah County residents, including whether they believed University of Idaho students and their parents lived in fear until the suspect in the student slayings had been taken into custody.
Survey questions:
- Have you read, seen, or heard if Kohberger was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania?
- Have you read seen or heard if police found knife sheath on the bed next to one of the victims?
- Have you read, seen, or heard if DNA found on the knife sheath was later matched to Kohberger?
- Have you read, seen, or heard if Kohberger owns the same type of car recorded on video during driving in the neighborhood where the killings occurred?
- Have you read, seen, or heard if the cell phone tower data show that Kohberger made several trips near the victims’ home in the months before the killing?
- Have you read, seen, or heard if the university students in Moscow and their parents lived in fear until Kohberger was arrested?
- Have you read, seen, or heard if Kohberger said he was out driving alone on the night of the murders?
- Have you read, seen, or heard that Kohberger stalked one of the victims? (The falseness of this question is addressed in court)
- Have you read, seen, or heard that Kohberger had followed one of the victims on social media?
Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson argues that not all of the details included in the survey were true and that the questions violated a gag order.
Prosecutors learned about the survey from a recording that a respondent made of the phone call, several news outlets have reported.
The judge in the case, John Judge, said the survey questions were too specific and jeopardized Kohberger’s right to a fair trial if the trial remained in Latah County.
Taylor has indicated that she conducted the survey as part of an effort to get the trial moved from the county, given the media attention that the case has created.
Judge issued an order last week to prohibit contact with prospective jurors and scheduled the next hearing for Wednesday. The judge did not specify whether the hearing could address whether the trial could be moved to a new venue.
The November 2022 stabbing deaths of the students shocked the small town of Moscow, Idaho, as the search for a suspect moved slowly.
Authorities eventually identified Kohberger using familial DNA and other evidence, including reports of his car being seen near the crime scene.
In March, relatives of two of the slain students issued a statement expressing frustration over the continued uncertainty about the upcoming trial. The Goncalves and Kernodle families said that they are tired of the delays that have been issued to avoid mistakes.
“We want to start healing, we do, we want to find justice and try to move on from this horrible tragedy so please, please, start making some decisions, get to work, and quit playing the game,” the statement read.
During pretrial hearings, Kohberger’s attorneys have pushed for the case to be dismissed and argued for the release of sealed genealogy information used to identify him. In a recent hearing, his defense team asked for a change of venue and asked for the trial to be delayed until 2025.
Criminal defense attorney Richard Blok told NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield he believes a change of venue is very likely.
“At the end of the day, I think we’re gonna see this case get moved,” Blok said on “Banfield.”
The judge had initially declined to set a trial date, but he scheduled a hearing for May 14 to determine if the trial would be moved and to establish the date.