Law&Crime Sidebar - Bryan Kohberger Silently Pleads Not Guilty as Shocking Revelations Surface in Idaho Murders Case

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Bryan Kohberger was arraigned in court Monday and pleaded not guilty by “standing silent” when the judge asked for his plea. Kohberger, who’s accused of brutally killing four University of Idaho students, appeared to firmly understand the charges at hand, including the possibility of receiving the death penalty if found guilty of the murders. Plus, new revelations about the accused student killer’s behavior after the murders have surfaced. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber and Angenette Levy, who was inside the courtroom at Kohberger’s hearing, breakdown the arraignment and new revelations with famed Johnny Depp attorney Ben Chew.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Save 10% on your entire POM Pepper Spray order by using code LAWCRIME10 at http://bit.ly/3IGNFxvLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&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.

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Mr. Perlberger, do you understand a charge in count one? Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. Do you understand the charge in count Two, murder in the first degree?

Yes. Do you understand the maximum penalty? Yes. Brian Coburger is officially arraigned on murder and burglary charges for the brutal slangs of four college students. Sidebar host, Angenette Levy, is reporting from outside the Idaho courthouse for the latest and renowned attorney Ben Shue, who famously represented Johnny Depp, comes on to give his take on the latest in this high-profile case. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. I have covered a lot of stories at law and crime,

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So as you know, Brian Coburger, the 28-year-old former Ph.D. student at Washington State University has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary, a connection with the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students back on November 13th, 22, 21-year-old Madison Mogan, 20-year-old Zana Kurnodal, 20-year-old Ethan Chapin, and 21-year-old Haley Insalves. He was arrested six weeks after the killings at his parents' home. And after a grand jury indicted him on those charges, he was officially arraigned in court, where he chose actually to stand silent as not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf. For more on what happened inside of that courtroom, let me bring in my sidebar co-host, Anginette Levy, who was in that

Leita County courtroom for the arraignment. She's outside of the courthouse right now. And we are also joined by very special guest, Ben Chu, who all of our law and crime followers will know as representing Johnny Depp in his famous trial from earlier last year. Ben, good to see you, Anjanet, good to see you. I'm going to start with you, Anjanet. You are outside the courthouse on what is a very windy day. Walk us through what you observed in that courtroom because it's the first time we've seen Brian Coburger in what? About four months since his first appearance? Well, Jesse, you know, thanks for having me. And it is a windy day, but yet a beautiful day, a sunny day here in Moscow, Idaho. Brian Koberger entered the courtroom, looking much like he did when we saw him back in January.

He came in with his attorney, Ann Taylor. They sat down at the council table, and you didn't really see much reaction from him. He looked straight ahead. He was brought in right before the hearings started. You could tell they had met and really laid out how they were going to do this from a security perspective. to ensure everything went in an orderly fashion by bringing the media in, bringing the family members in, et cetera, et cetera. So basically he came in, the judge took the bench, Judge John Judge, and he asked Brian Coburger whether or not he understood his rights. And he said that he did. He said yes. He answered yes very emphatically and forcefully to each question that was asked. Then the judge read the charges to him. It was one burglary count.

and then the four murder charges. He said that he understood the charges, the penalties that came with each charge, should he be convicted. And he said he understood his right to a speedy trial. As you mentioned, Ann Taylor, his defense attorney said that they would stand silent. So Judge, Judge, entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. She also said that she wanted a trial date outside, just outside of that speedy trial time frame. So right now, the trial is scheduled for October 2nd. of this year. That's pretty fast for a case of this magnitude with four murders and the voluminous

amount of evidence in this case. One thing, Jesse, that I did want to point out was that before the hearing started, it was a really touching moment between Christy Gonzalez and Maddie Mogan's mother. Christy walked up and put kind of an arm around Maddie Mogan's mother. You could tell she was kind of consoling her. Maddie and Kaylee were described as sisters. They grew up together, So it was a really kind of a heartwarming thing to see that because if you think about it, the killer went to Maddie's bedroom first. That is where he apparently intended to go that night. So I thought that was a really kind of an interesting thing that happened. Also, after court, I should note the attorney for, or pardon me, Kaylee Gonzalez's older sister, spoke to a representative from the court and actually said, you know,

the judge mispronounced my sister's name. He called her Kayla. Her name is Kaylee. And the representative of the court said, yeah, I'm really sorry. He just made a mistake. And she said, well, it's disrespectful and it's important that you get my sister's name right. So that was somewhat upsetting to the Gonzalez family that she was referred to as Kayla Gonzalez and not Kaylee. All right.

And Janette, thank you. That was a great perspective right there. Really good report on what happened in the courthouse. Ben, I want to turn it to you about this standing silent. why Koeberger would choose not to enter a not guilty plea, but just stand silent and allow the court to basically enter the not guilty plea on his behalf? Jesse, first, good to be with you. There's some speculation that the reason he did not do that is arguably it would make it easier

in the event that he and his counsel seek to make a plea at a later time and don't want to have the sound clip of of him saying not guilty that is one of the prevailing theories that i have heard were i his defense counsel and i thought this was actually going to trial i would have wanted him to to say not guilty as definitively as he said uh that he understood the nature of the charges against him i find that so interesting because even if he were to enter not guilty and say not guilty he could still make a deal right if the if the the one of the things that we're wondering is if the death penalty is going to be on the table and would he plead guilty uh in order to spare his life we're moving a lot of very fast here because we don't know if the death penalty will actually

be on the table but that's the thing that i don't understand is what would be the difference whether he says not guilty you know he might say not guilty he feels he can fight this case versus staying silent there's no legal reason for him to do it he could still make a deal i just find it's so curious. I do too, Jesse. I completely agree with you. There would be nothing to preclude him making a deal later on. I was just playing devil's advocate to some point. I would have wanted to hear him say not guilty. Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. Unfortunately, we got a little cut off with Ann Jeanette, but I'll tell you what happened also in court. Apparently, regarding when the trial date is said, it's now set for October 2nd, 23, and Taylor, who's Brian Coburn.

Berger's attorney said regarding his right to a speedy trial, she asked the judge to set it just outside of the speedy trial limits, and they appear ready to go for October. Do you think that's relatively quick? And it shows almost, I think, a level of confidence in their case, no, the defense's case. Yeah, Jesse, that's how I read it. I think they wanted to make a show of confidence, whether that's real or protectional. I don't know. I think it's a practical matter.

I think it's still likely to be pushed into 2024, especially if the prosecution does decide to go for the death penalty and understand they have another 30 days, maybe it's 60 days. 60 days. 60 days. I apologize. Enginette would have corrected me if you hadn't, Jesse, but they have another 60 days to make that determination. And by the way, I don't want anybody to think, like, I deliberately cut Anginette out of

broadcast, so it could just be the Ben and Jesse show, as much fun as that would be, because Angenet's been doing terrific reporting as she always does. But I find it interesting also with the death penalty. We know that Brian Koberger has already secured counsel, extra counsel, to fight this if this is a death penalty case. From the majority of the people I've been speaking to, they are saying prosecutors will move forward with the death penalty. It's one of those cases that stands out. It meets the qualifications. What's your take on whether or not prosecutors are actually going to go forward with the death penalty. Jesse, I would have to agree. I think the circumstances of these murders are just so horrific. I mean, the nature of

the victims, you know, young, beautiful college kids, the fact that at least one of them reportedly, and there's a gag order in effect, so we don't have all the evidence that we might normally have. But I understand that at least one of the victims had defensive wounds. So you can imagine that there was a fair amount of fear, pain, and suffering. It wasn't just exclusively the victims being stabbed in their sleep, which would be horrific enough. But if you're going to have a death penalty, I can't imagine it wouldn't apply here. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. I think it's even if you put aside how much attention this case has gotten, you put that aside the level of attack, the age of these victims, the gruesome brutality of it, I wouldn't be surprised if, of course,

they go forward with that. I do want to ask you something, and that's the fact that we weren't even supposed to have this arraignment. He was supposed to have a preliminary hearing set for June, and that preliminary hearing we know would have been in front of a judge. A judge would have determine if there's enough probable cause to move forward with this case to trial. It would have, the prosecution would have be able to present witnesses. The defense could have questioned the prosecution's witnesses. And yet, the prosecutors, without any of us knowing, impaneled a secret grand jury of, you know, 12 to 23 jurors, and the majority of them have to ultimately vote in favor.

And we didn't know this was happening. There were rumors of it. And paneled a grand jury. and they came forward with the indictment. So this preliminary hearing was canceled, and now we had the arraignment. Why do you think prosecutors went the route of going with a secret grand jury as opposed to presenting this at a preliminary hearing? Jesse, I think it was very clever of the prosecutors to do that because they thereby prevented the cross-examination of some of those witnesses that otherwise could have and would have happened at the preliminary. hearing. That is, the defendants would have had their first crack at some of the prosecution

witnesses. This way, all of that is avoided. So the prosecution made a wise tactical choice. Goes back to your theory, though, of the defendants, and perhaps they are confident, and perhaps the prosecution is worried about some of these witnesses, because they certainly protected them at least at this stage by foregoing the preliminary hearing in favor of the grand jury, which they can kind of present at their leisure. It's the prosecution's case at a grand jury. They can present what they want, how much what they want, what they feel is necessary to get back that indictment.

They do have to present exculpatory evidence, which is what I think is really interesting here as well, is the defense has been very keen to suggest they have or the prosecution has exculpatory information. And when I say exculpatory in evidence, it's evidence that would show Brian Koberger's innocent, that he didn't do this. Now, prosecutors have seemed to suggest that they don't know what this evidence is. It's a big thing to use the term exculpatory evidence. What do you think the defense is thinking of here?

I mean, what do you think they have? I'm not sure. As one of the other commentators on Linda's program aptly put it, if I were in the prosecutor's shoes, I would err on the side of producing, you know, producing evidence. you don't want anything in the event of the conviction that could come along and justify an appeal. The only thing I could think of is, you know, there's a suggestion about the two non-victims, although they were probably victims in their own sense, but the two people who lived in the house who, thank God,

were, did not become actual victims, you know, the fact that they were really not in a position to identify the suspect as, as the killer. Maybe they're referring to that testimony. It's a little unclear. And I think the gag order, you know, makes it harder for us. You know, I think we're kind of seeing through a glass darkly rather than, you know, having as much direct evidence as we normally would have at this stage. I'm glad you mentioned the gag order, because one of the thing that's happening with a gag order and all this information is not being made public is, unfortunately, it's speculation. And sometimes there's misreporting. And there's conspiracy theory. one of the dangers, and we're seeing new information about Koberger all the time, and there is

an outstanding issue whether the gag order will be lifted. I know different media companies have been trying to ultimately have that lifted, so there's more transparency here. But we're seeing this new information, and I want to talk to you about NBC Dateline. They reported, we can't confirm it, but they reported new details about Koberger. One of them being that when he was a grad student, he deliberately snuck into some woman's room, her apartment, her house, and that was his way of ultimately trying to, you know, have her get security cameras. It was a ruse for her to get security cameras. So he deliberately snuck in there and under the pretense of, you know, he slipped in there and because of that, she was alerted to the fact that someone broke in, she didn't know it was him. and then he offered to install security cameras.

It's kind of a weird allegation. There's also been allegations from NBC's dateline that Koberger's family suspected he might be the killer. They thought it was weird that he was wearing latex gloves. They checked his car at one point for evidence. Now, assuming this is true, which again, we can't confirm, do you think any of that information would play a role in his upcoming trial? I think that the judge would be very careful.

about in terms of allowing any of that while relevant, it might be deemed overly prejudicial. And again, like the prosecution, wanting to produce anything arguably exculpatory, I'm sure the judge would want to be careful in this case, Judge's Judge, of allowing in evidence anything that might form the basis of an appeal. So I suspect the judge will take a conservative approach to that. But with that said, I think the prosecutor, should make every effort to, you know, to get as much in as they can, you know, can go to, you know, his modus operandi. There are a lot of seemingly odd facts about this

defendant. And the fact the nature of his studies suggests that this may be, maybe in a very perverse sense, part of his graduate program, you know, his belief that he could get away with it's the one thing that we don't know is the motive it hasn't been laid out by prosecutors we don't know if he was specifically targeting any of them or he was stalking them or he was going after them for a particular reason why he would want to do this again allegedly he's innocent until proven guilty which now brings me to what i want to talk to you next ben i want to talk to you right now about the evidence against coberger the evidence we know of prosecutors might have more that they're not sharing one of the i guess the advantages of going the grand jury route not a

hearing, they didn't lay everything out on the table. We don't know what was presented to the grand jury. Now, and by the way, just talking about the grand jury for a moment, the prosecution also asked the court to seal the names of the witnesses who testified at the grand jury so that they're not targeted or harassed in any way. But let's now get into the evidence. The probable cause affidavit and what has come forward after in the search of Coburger's apartment, what do you think is the strongest piece of evidence against him? For me, I think it's the surveillance footage and the cell phone footage. Dan. No, I agree with that. I think those are the two strongest. I think also the tracking information about his vehicle. I think is compelling as well. Now, he could say perhaps somebody else is

driving his car. That doesn't sound wildly plausible. But I think the two aspects that you mentioned were the most and also the tracking. And I think I think jurors are used to that kind of evidence these days. You know, they watch TV, they watch law and crime. They watch law and order. I think they're used to that kind of evidence. And it can be quite compelling. Yeah. And to give everybody a summary of what that evidence is, the phone, his phone, turned off or was an airplane mode around the time of the killings, but right before it turned off or switched off the network, the phone indicated that it was headed toward the direction of that neighborhood. And then immediately comes on or comes on after the killings. So the idea would be turned it off as a way to avoid

capture. Then the surveillance footage, right, of his car, the car that's associated with him, the White Hyundai Alantra, it's around that neighborhood. It's around that neighborhood between 329 and 4.20 a.m. when they say the killings happen. And at 420, they see the car speeding away from that house, speeding away from that neighborhood at a high rate of speed. And then later on, in the day, I think at like 1240 in the afternoon, Koberger is seen on camera leaving that car and going to shop at Albertsons, which just again makes it very difficult for him to say

that's not his car, someone else had his phone. I guess he could say it's not uncommon for someone to visit that campus or visit that area for a night out. But remember, the cell phone footage, the cell phone evidence also indicates he was visiting that neighborhood multiple times before the killing. So I think that's the strongest. What's your take on the DNA evidence, this DNA that was left at the crime scene on this

knife sheath, the DNA came back as matching the father of the, it's a familial connection to Brian Koberger. What's your take on that? I think, again, I think that that will be attacked clearly by the defense. But I think that is more, you know, it's just another piece of the puzzle. And it looks bad for this defendant and all of it, all of the what you mentioned and the sheath. I know we're not sure that they've actually found the murder weapon because that's part of the gag order. Obviously, that would be the real, you know, crowning blow.

But all of this would make a jury think that if Kohlberger was innocent, that he should be testifying. And obviously he's got every, you know, he's got it right under the fifth not to testify. The jury's not allowed to hold that against them. But I think common sense dictates and will dictate to the jury that they would want to hear him explain away, you know, this mountain of evidence pointing to him. He doesn't have to, though. It's not like a self-defense case. Wouldn't it just be more beneficial for him to strike at the prosecution's case, how they collected the evidence,

We know, what was it, a month ago, two months ago, there was an issue in terms of one of the officers who was connected to this case. There might have been had turned over Brady material, you know, that there might have been something with respect, an issue with respect to that officer. Maybe not directly connected to the Coburger case, but something that would impeach that officer's credibility in a significant way. Again, I keep going back to it seems to me, Coburger's defense feels confident. Absolutely. And I think if they can succeed in going after the investigation and the investigators and they can poke some of the holes in the DNA and this other evidence, they may not face the dilemma of putting their client on this stand. It's going to be a very difficult decision for the defendant and his counsel, what her recommendation to him will be. But a lot of it

will depend on how successful, as you point out, they are in attacking that, in that evidence. And by the way, talking about evidence, the evidence that was collected from his apartment, we know that at least two items tested positive for blood. We don't know whose blood it is. The two items, I think, were a mattress cover and an uncased pillow. They had these reddish brown stains, again, could be significant here. And then I know they were also looking for human and animal. hair because one of the victims had a dog in the house, if that's actually the blood of one of the

victims and that hair is tested positive for the same animal that was in the crime scene, I feel like that's a big slam dunk for prosecutors now. Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. And then I just want to leave everybody with, and I want to ask you, Ben, real quick, what you're expecting next? Do you think a deal is going to be reached or do you think that this is a case where they're

going to fight it? Because, again, the fact that you said that he chose to stand silent, you know, didn't enter a plea, maybe he's opening himself up for negotiations. What do you think is going to happen between now and October? Well, I think they're mixed signals. You know, I think that that has been speculated that that signals a possible deal. On the other hand, as you pointed out, Jesse, the fact that they said they're ready to go in October, you know, suggests that maybe they are spoiling for a fight. although again that could be posturing you know to help their position in the negotiations i would think she would have to be thinking strongly about negotiations because this is a case where it's

quite plausible uh that he could be up for the death penalty which is quite a sobering possibility oh yes it is and we will continue to follow it uh ben shue pleasure always great having you on i love talking about this with you. I love getting your respective about these cases. We always appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ben. Jesse, thank you for having me. And that's all we have for you here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us.

Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.