Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bryan Kohberger Judge Blasts Defense In Bombshell Decisions About Trial

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Judge Hippler has denied Bryan Kohberger's request to delay his August trial for the murders of four University of Idaho students. Hippler also made a major decision about whether Kohberger can point the finger at four other suspects during the trial as part of his defense. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes over all of the details in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code CRIMEFIX at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Josh Ritter https://www.youtube.com/@CRConfidentialProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. I fully encourage everyone to continue as if the trial is going to take place when it is scheduled for. Judge Hippler makes big decisions about Brian Coburger's trial when it will start and whether Coburger will be allowed to point the finger at other suspects. I break down the new orders from the judge and go over what we know about the people

that Coburger wants to accuse of murder. Welcome to CrimeFix. I'm Ann Jeanana Levy. Judge Hippler has made up his mind and Brian Coburger's lawyers are likely not very happy. The judge has always known nonsense in his orders and this time was no different. Hippler has denied Coburger's request to continue his trial, which is scheduled for August. And he's also shut down the defense's request to tell the jury about other people who could have carried out the murders. It's called alternative perpetrator evidence.

Now, we learned a little bit about who these people are in the judge's order. And there's a lot of information in these new documents. Let me tell you a lot. And we're going to talk about all of it. Coburger is accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death. You know their names, but we cannot say their names enough. They are Maddie Mogin, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Zana Cronodal. All four were found dead in the house on King Road in Moscow on November 13, 2022. Two of the roommates were left unharmed and they will testify at the trial.

Coburger faces the possibility of the death penalty if he's convicted and his attorneys have said he maintains his innocence in these crimes. Coburger's lawyer, Ann Taylor, has been in his lawyer since his arrest in late December of 2022. And she says she and Coburger's defense team, they're simply not ready for trial. She talked about this at a hearing last week. Looking through the history of this case shows that the

defense has met challenges and difficulties along the way but has been dedicated in meeting all of the deadlines. We have talked about discovery issues in this courtroom before and that in large part brings us to need a continuance. 68 terabytes of information is a huge amount of information. There have been 23 requests for additional discovery over the span of two and a half years and seven motions to compel. When I say that this doesn't come as a surprise, that this comes from the record, I would direct the court to look back to May of 2023 and June of 2023 and our second motion to compel. Included in that was what was known as Exhibit A from the defense and that depicted how we were receiving discovery. So this is not a new issue,

this is something that's been coming up for a long time. We were receiving discovery, but it was such that you would get a file that would say hundreds of photographs, hundreds of pages of reports, each having to be looked at individually to know what was there and then organized. Taylor has talked before about receiving 68 terabytes of discovery from the prosecution. But the prosecution says much of that is irrelevant. Then Taylor pointed to the media coverage and the Dateline episode that aired last month with information that hadn't been known to the public previously. Dateline claimed Coburger searched pornography about forcing sex on women who were sleeping,

that he searched Google for serial killer Ted Bundy, and that he also searched for news about the murders and his name. Dateline also aired selfies Coburger took where he wore all black. Everything that happens in this case continues to be talked about and this court has a duty, a responsibility to make sure that Mr. Coeberger receives a fair trial. That comes from Shepard v. Maxwell 384 US 333. And a continuance may be the way that the court can protect Mr. Koperger.

That comes from Patton versus Yonk 467 US 1025. In addition to what is going on with what happened with the Dateline episode, that's not all. There's a book set to be released just a few weeks from now to be followed by a docu-series on Amazon Prime. There's a claim that there's inside sources that provide information in this case. At the very least, the moment we start attempting

to select a jury in this case, those things are going to be on everybody's TV, everybody's social media feed, and some of the very witnesses that will be expected to testify will be taking part in the docu-series at least and may be noted in the book. That is in and of itself an exceptional reason for us to have a continuance to let those things play out for a while. Now, Judge Hippler had suggested last month that he wanted an investigation into the person or people who leaked this information.

We'll have more on that in a bit. Ann Taylor also said she needed more time to investigate Brian Coburger's life history to prepare for a possible penalty phase. The new special prosecutor on the case responded to that and Taylor's other arguments. We have a life history for the defendant. The defense has amassed significant materials.

And I thought we were going to be solely talking about the mitigation case that still needs to be developed. That is not a basis for a continuance. And to the extent there are ongoing discovery from the state that Ms. Taylor alluded to, I can represent that most of what was just turned over was our investigators speaking with witnesses that the defense has disclosed. So that's the nature of that discovery is us responding. As Ms. Taylor said, people will continue

to talk about this case. The issue is whether the court using the procedures it has established or maybe even modifying them as the court wants to can seat a panel of impartial jurors. The Supreme Court of Idaho has found that despite widespread publicity, even on the day of jury selection, that is possible. That is possible in this case, despite the challenges.

The other thing I would mention with respect to the publicity is that it puts us at the whim of the media. Every time there's a breaking story, every time there's a new book or a new documentary, are we going to continue the trial indefinitely? And that seems to be the danger in what the defense is asking for. We call it a perpetual continuance, and we haven't seen a proposal about when this trial could take place If there is a continuance What seems to be the strategy here is just to delay that leads me to I think the other Point than this Taylor raised which was to say that you know, this shouldn't be a surprise

It is a surprise to us that emotion continued to continue was made so late in the game. Our content shows you just how important your personal safety is, and that's especially true when it comes to protecting your privacy online. You would be absolutely shocked at how much of your personal information is out there like your address and phone number. Ever wonder why you get so many spam calls and emails?

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about not being able to review discovery. Hipler wrote, the court found defendants complaints of being unable to meaningfully review discovery entirely unconvincing, pointing out that counsel struggled to articulate in any meaningful way what evidence, let alone relevant evidence, counsel had been unable to review over the past two-plus years

and why efforts to facilitate discovery review were not made long ago through this court and or the resource judge. Then Hipler addressed the whole issue about needing more time to conduct a life history investigation. Hipler wrote, The assertion that counsel needs the continuance to conduct an exhaustive and comprehensive dive into defendant's life history for additional mitigation evidence overstates the extent of his counsel's constitutional obligations. Counsel's investigation into mitigation evidence must be reasonable.

The Idaho Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court hold the defense counsel is not required to investigate a defendant's entire life in order to present constitutionally sufficient mitigation evidence. We're going to get to what Judge Hippler had to say about the defense's argument about pretrial publicity here in just a moment.

But I want to bring in Josh Ritter. He is a former prosecutor at the LADA's office, currently a defense attorney and the host of Courtroom Confidential on YouTube. Check it out. Josh, your thoughts, your initial thoughts, on Judge Hippler denying the defense request for a continuance?

I'm not surprised at all. I mean, one, we got kind of a preview of this last week when the judge made those comments in court that, listen, I haven't made up my mind. I haven't written a decision. But I would encourage everyone to go ahead and plan as though we were starting trial on the same date that he had indicated earlier.

And the reasons that he gave are kind of the reasons we all suspected. Yes, the defense wants more time, but they haven't really articulated a reason for that. It's one thing to say, we need more time to prepare. Well, you've been saying that for quite some time. What makes this different? What changed? How are you somehow prejudiced?

How is this somehow going to affect your case? And the judge said that essentially that was not articulated enough for him to feel that it was overriding to the concerns for justice because the people and the victims in this case have a right to have this case heard too. They don't need to have to wait an endless amount of time for this to come to trial. So I think the judge did the right thing and it's also not surprising. That's interesting to me that you think he did the right thing because Ann Taylor kept saying, you know, this is a death penalty case.

This is a capital case. Death is different. We need more time to investigate things. But I want to put up on the screen everything the judge says they've got. You know, they've got all of this stuff they've looked into. You know, military records of his got, you know, they've got all of this stuff they've looked into, you know, military records of his father, you know, his pre-K or kindergarten records

through his PhD records. You know, they've interviewed former teachers, a former boxing coach, all of these different people. I mean, there's a lot that they've investigated so far. And the judge is basically saying, like, you don't, in order to protect his rights, you don't have to investigate every nook and cranny of his life. It just has to be reasonable. And you've done a lot of investigation already. They were saying, you know, we have to do more. There's these red flags. And the judge is like, no, there aren't, there really aren't any red flags.

Yeah, it's not a small point to say it's a death penalty case. And of course it has been treated differently. And I think the judge has given a lot of deference to the defense in this case, but how far does that go? It's not endless. It's not an endless amount of continuances just because it's a death penalty case.

And I think he's been hearing this same argument from Ann Taylor for a while now. And he's starting to go, listen, we're talking about going close to three years now since the murders took place. That is a tremendous amount of time. Yes, this is a very serious case. Yes, it's a case serious both to the victims, their families, and to the defendant. He's looking at the possibility of the death penalty. But at the core of it, if you really think about it, this case is not all that complicated.

What I mean by that is this. We're not talking multiple defendants. We're not talking several different crimes that took place on several different days where we might expect the complexity to grow exponentially. We're talking about one evening. Now the loss of life was tremendous, but it all took place on one evening by one perpetrator. That is something that as far as factually you can get your head wrapped around in pretty short order.

Getting close to three years is plenty of time for that. Yes, to your point, they could probably spend another year investigating and trying to turn over every unturned stone. But eventually the judge has to say enough is enough. It's time to go. You know, and he also said, you know, you've said you've got the 68 terabytes of evidence, but you know, you wait until the last minute to file for a continuance. You don't bring this up until now. You didn't look for you don't bring this up until now you didn't look for You didn't ask for more help

You didn't ask for like a team of paralegals to help you go through this stuff and much of what you were given In that 68 terabytes is irrelevant and you filed you filed tons of motions in this case I mean he he knows he's dealing with really competent attorneys. Yes, I'm sure they would love more time. But he's saying, guess what, this is where the rubber meets the road. You should have brought this up earlier if you were having all of these issues. It's time to do this. One more thing to think about here is that it might not be as much that the defense feels like they need more time as they feel like they need to make a record that they need more time. What I mean by that is

correct. They're always thinking about appeal, especially in a death penalty case, and preserving these issues. And the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel doesn't necessarily mean that your attorney did a bad job That your attorney was incompetent. It can mean that your attorney wasn't given enough time to adequately prepare Well, you can't make those arguments if those objections are not in the record so it could be just more of this kind of I don't want to call it a show but it could just be more of this kind of, I don't want to call it a show, but it could just be more performative

for the purposes of appeal than it is really a request that they need the more time to actually be prepared and ready. Let's talk now about the big elephant in the room, the Dateline leak and the pre-trial publicity. First, we've got the Amazon Prime documentary coming out in just less than two weeks from now. So that's hitting Amazon Prime, and that's going to feature Ethan Chapin's family, witnesses

in the case, and Maddie Mogan's family, her mother and stepfather. Then we've got a James Patterson book coming out. But then we've got the Dateline leak, where information was leaked to Dateline that nobody knew about, at least the public didn't know about, regarding the Google searches attributed to Brian Koberger, the selfies where he's wearing all black, things of this nature. You know, wearing all black looking like the person that the surviving roommate DM described,

walking through the house without the mask, at least, searching for Ted Bundy, all of these different things, having photographs of the friends of the victims. There's a lot there. I mean, and it was prejudicial, according to Ann Taylor. The judge said that he wanted an investigation, and he signaled that a special prosecutor should be appointed to look into this. But I want to put up on the screen now what he is saying. He's basically saying now that pretrial publicity,

we're going to do voir dire. We're essentially extending jury selection another week to do this. And he has mentioned in the past that they may have to sequester the jury. But he's saying there's no proof that delaying the trial is going to do anything to alleviate the effects of pretrial publicity on the case.

And then he writes about this investigation, the investigation that he kind of said he wanted. In addition, even assuming it was law enforcement who leaked the information, the FBI played a preeminent role in the investigation of this case. If the leak or leaks were from the FBI, a state court's ability to further investigate is highly circumscribed and limited,

if not altogether foreclosed. In addition, law enforcement in Pennsylvania and Washington may have had formal or informal access to some of the evidence, yet an Idaho state court may have significant limitations on the ability to investigate them." That almost sounds like he's saying, hey, my hands are tied here. We may never find out who leaked this. I've talked to many people who think that you can find out who leaked this. So what's the deal here? I mean, he's not going to delay the trial to try to find out who the leaker is.

He said that. He said it's speculative. He's not going to delay a trial and hold the trial hostage based on an investigation into finding a leak. But he's almost saying like, we may never find out and the FBI was involved in this case and I can't investigate the FBI. I got to tell you, I really like this judge. I think he's very thoughtful. I think he's very fair too. And that's what I like about him. But I also think he's right on this point. Here's what he's saying. He's saying, one, a delay is not going to change the leak.

In other words, giving you more time doesn't change the fact that that information's out there. So how does delaying the trial cure any of this? Really what it creates is problems for jury selection, which are always going to exist. It's going to cause the attorneys to have to question jurors more about what they know. Have they watched this Dateline episode? Do they know about the leaked information? Has that affected their ability to be a fair juror or not? That's the real issue.

And so the delay is really comparing apples to oranges in his view. The other thing he's saying is, in far as the investigation goes, is even if the leaker were discovered, that doesn't necessarily change or alter the integrity of the evidence or what the evidence is. In other words, yeah, we could find that person out, but we're still gonna be dealing with the same evidence that we have here. So therefore, again, a continuance isn't going to do much to address any of that.

There's one point I'll come back to that is a nightmare scenario dealing with that. But then finally he's saying, and this is something I hadn't even really thought about, yeah, he can assign a special prosecutor. Yeah, he can give them subpoena rights. Yeah, he can assign a special prosecutor. Yeah, he can give them subpoena rights. Yeah, he can say go out there and investigate. That doesn't mean that the FBI is going to open up their doors. And if this quote unquote leaker happened to be within the FBI,

they may come to a end here that has no end where they just don't know who the leaker is. And given that uncertainty and indefinite timeline, he's again saying, I can't delay this based on the idea that maybe perhaps someday in the future, we might find out who this is. Now, getting back to the one nightmare scenario I imagine, I hope this is not true. I can't see this being true, but I could see there being a problem. If the leaker is determined to be someone closely connected to the investigation, someone in law enforcement, someone who collected evidence, that could be a problem.

That's what I think. And that's where I think the defense, let's say that's the nightmare scenario, the doomsday scenario, then the defense should be able to cross examine that person. Absolutely. If that is the case, they should be able to question that person. But Judge Hipler kind of suggested earlier on that it's likely somebody on the state side, or at least that was his suspicion. Now he's leaving the door open saying basically, but it could have been somebody on the defense side.

So he's kind of like walking that back a little bit. He's leaving it open to the have been somebody on the defense side. So he's kind of like walking that back a little bit. He's leaving it open to the fact that somebody on the defense side could have leaked it. So we'll see. So he's saying trials going forward. He's now extending the Wadir period from August 4 to through the week of August 11. So we're going to have now two weeks for jury selection,

opening statements pushed back to August 18th. So two weeks to select a death-qualified jury, that's a significant amount of time. It is a significant amount of time. Maybe that was kind of him, yeah, a compromise saying, yeah, I do believe that the biggest problem we might have here is with jury selection. So let's give us a little bit more time to do that.

Also, when you're selecting a death qualified jury, it's just going to take longer because you have to go through the entire panel and weed out those who say for whatever reason, religious, moral, or otherwise, that they would never vote for the death penalty. You've got to get rid of all those folks. It just takes a lot more time.

And it's a much more serious case. So they're going to take longer with each individual juror. So I think two weeks is probably enough. I wouldn't be surprised if towards the end of it they're asking for more time, but I think they could probably get the work done in that period of time. Let's turn now to the judge's decision on the alternate perpetrator. I like to just call it the some other dude did it evidence.

Judge Hippler slammed the door on the defense on this stuff. The defense wanted to point the finger at four suspects. Their names are all redacted. We have a lot of black, a lot of black, a lot of redactions here in the paperwork, in the judge's order. And basically there were three people that the defense singled out.

They presented this evidence under seal to Judge Hippler. These are people who were in the social circles of the victims. They had the social circles of the victims. They had interacted with some of the victims at parties and things like that before the homicides and at least with one of the victims. And there was a fourth person who apparently noticed one of the victims at a store shopping five weeks before the murders, went to approach her, and then turned away before, you know, he could talk to her. This was captured on surveillance video. The judge is saying basically, look, all of these people cooperated with the investigation.

They gave DNA samples. They let the cops look at their phones. They cooperated. They have no connection. And under the case law in Idaho, the Meister case, there has to be a connection. You have to be able to show a connection in order to point the finger at people. And this is the case law in Idaho. So he's saying basically, right now, you haven't shown me enough to do this.

Your thoughts on that, Josh? Again, I think he's spot on. I mean, the biggest thing that the judge is concerned with in making this ruling is that we don't want to confuse the jurors. It's one thing to present alternate theories, but it's another thing to just throw up anything that looks suspicious and hoping that that confuses the jurors. And that's the decision he had to make. And according to the case law in Idaho, you are correct. You have to point out that there is beyond some sort of just suspicion, that there actually is evidence that connects this other person,

this alternate perpetrator to the crime. But beyond that, you have to show that even if you feel someone else may have been implicated, how is that person exculpatory to the defendant? So yes, we've even heard, and I thought we were going to hear more about this, but apparently they went with other theories, but we even heard about unidentified male DNA being found in other parts of that home. Well, just because you found other unidentified male DNA does not mean that Brian Coburger's

DNA is not on the knife sheet or does not mean that somehow Brian Coburger may not be involved according to the police. So it's one thing to say other people could have been involved, but are they involved to the exclusion of the defendant? And he didn't find any of that exists here. Instead, you're left with something where it just could be confusing to jurors. Now, that all being said, this doesn't take away the argument from the defense about if they want to say that this investigation was a rush to judgment or myopic. They can still say, well, didn't you receive all these other

tips and you didn't investigate those tips, did you? Or you really found Brian Koberger and then you just forgot about all the other information. They could still kind of cross-examine investigators and present those arguments, but they cannot specifically identify another person and say, this person's good for it, and the police didn't look at them. Yeah, he's really shut the door on where they can go,

the avenues of the defense. So jury selection, August 4th for two weeks, then opening statements on August 18th. I'll be there in Boise, Idaho. Josh Ritter, thank you so much for your time as always. Thank you so much for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Angie Nutt-Levy. Thanks so much for being with me.

I'll see you back here next time.