Law&Crime Sidebar - Idaho Murders Suspect Bryan Kohberger’s Affidavit is ‘Nothing Strange’: Scott Peterson’s Ex-Lawyer

Episode Date: January 14, 2023

Accused student murderer Bryan Kohberger appeared in Latah County court Thursday for a status hearing regarding the next steps in the Idaho murders case. Kohberger's public defender requested a delay in the case, asking the judge to schedule his preliminary hearing for June to give the defense time to build their case. The Law&Crime Network's Angenette Levy breaks that, and the evidence in Bryan Koherber's affidavit down with former Scott Peterson attorney Lara Yeretsian.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe 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.

Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and welcome back to Sidebar here on Law and Crime. Brian Coburger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students, was back in court this week. And at that time, his lawyer, Ann Taylor, asked for a preliminary hearing, but she asked for it to be set at the end of June, delaying the case nearly six months. Take a listen to why she said she wanted to delay the hearing until the end of June. We are going to ask the court to set preliminary hearing out into June. We would request the third or fourth week of June

and probably four or five days for preliminary hearing. Mr. Kroger, understands his right to a timely preliminary hearing, and he's willing to waive the timeliness to allow us time to obtain discovery. And going through the discovery in this case, that's the evidence that prosecutors hand over will take a lot of time. It's going to be voluminous with nearly 20,000 tips that police have received, plus DNA test results, cell phone records, you name it, they are going to get it. So they need a lot of time to prepare. Joining me to discuss preparing for a prelim that could take a lot of time as someone who knows about that. She is Laura Euretzian. She was a member of Scott Peterson's defense team about 20 years ago when they were handling his case when he was

accused of murdering his pregnant wife, Lacey, and their unborn child, Connor. So Laura, welcome to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me, Ann Jeanette. A lot of people were really shocked when Ann Taylor asked for a six-month, nearly six-month delay. But we just were talking about this. When Scott Peterson was arrested, it was something. time in the spring of 2003. And then you guys didn't start the prelim for months. It started in October and then ended in January. It went on for weeks and weeks. So this was not a big surprise to you, I'm assuming. Of course it wasn't a surprise. She's getting voluminous discovery. That's going to require not just one attorney, but an entire team of attorneys and experts to go through. And that is

very time-consuming because the preliminary hearing is important, right? It's the probable cause finding. And she needs to be ready. It's not a one or two-day prelim. This is probably going to be several weeks. I'm assuming at least five to eight weeks as far as the prelim is concerned. So it's the right thing to do. You cannot rush into the prelim unprepared. She has to ask for that time. It's very much expected and it's the right way to do it. I'm sure she'll also be given a team of investigators. She's the chief public defender for another county in the Cordillane area of Idaho, about two hours to the north of Layta County. She may have her own team of investigator employed by that office that will assist. She's asked for five days, between four and

five days for this preliminary hearing. That's a little bit surprising to me, given the amount of evidence that will likely be turned over in this case. And the fact that you're saying in the Peterson case, it was weeks and weeks. So what do you think of her thinking she can get this done in four to five days. Maybe it's too early for her to assess, and I wouldn't be surprised. She probably hasn't had the time to go through the entire discovery. And like you said, she's going to have a team of investigators help her, and they're going to be doing their own investigation, which is something that we did during the Scott Peterson case. We had our own private investigators, and we were chasing after witnesses, talking to people, looking into

things, having experts look at some of the evidence, guiding us through some of it, preparing for the prelim. So it ended up being, I know, at least six weeks from what I recall, it could have been longer. It's been 20 years. But I would expect the prelim to be longer unless things are done a little differently in Idaho or the courts have certain rules. I'm not really sure. Anything is possible. But I would have expected a longer prelil. And it may end up being much longer. They can always go back to the court and ask for a longer period of time. Would you expect them, the defense, to present witnesses at a preliminary hearing? I've been told that actually can happen, but I don't know if it actually will.

They can put up an affirmative defense or impeachment witnesses, but most likely, especially in a case like this, they're not going to do it unless they truly, truly have the kind of exonerating evidence that would get this case dismissed at a prelim, which is generally highly unlikely. It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. It happens in cases where the defense puts on evidence and the case is dismissed at the preliminary hearing phase. These can be pretty routine hearings, but I don't expect this to be routine just because of the nature of it. It's a quadruple homicide case. So this isn't going to be like something where you go in, some type of lower level felony and call a couple of witnesses and then it's over and it's bound over to a higher court for Raymond or what have you. So I expect this to be more of a mini trial type of thing, trial of the evidence, because sometimes you can get some really interesting information from witnesses during a preliminary hearing.

Technically, you're not supposed to use the prelim for discovery, but you do get a lot of interesting information. And in addition, people start talking, whether it be officers or precipient witnesses. And as defense counsel, we get an idea of what these people are going to say and what kind of witnesses they're going to make. And that helps in preparation for the trial. But you're right, this is going to be a mini trial, really, maybe even a trial without a jury. It all depends on how the attorneys handle it and want to go about doing it. it. Again, like I said, during Scott Peterson's case, it took us weeks, but the trial, of course,

took months. And it was a mini version of the trial when we did the prelim. And I would expect something similar with a lot of witnesses. I mean, you've got a lot of officers here who have been involved. And witnesses, a lot of evidence. Maybe experts may testify, may not. I wouldn't necessarily expect too many experts at this stage. But again, both sides are going to be consulting with the experts so that they can effectively represent, at least the defense, effectively represent their clients. Where do you see the defense going? Obviously, there are things in the probable cause affidavit that we know about. The DNA on the sheath that they say belongs to Brian Coburger, the cell phone records where they say his phone was in the area of the tower servicing the King Road

homes. We have the video, the surveillance video of allegedly his vehicle, trying to pull park at the house. So there are a lot of things that the defense is going to question in this case, along with this eyewitness testimony of the surviving roommate who says she saw a man clad in black, walk toward her door, go out the sliding glass door, and she said he had bushy eyebrows. So she can't, to our knowledge, she hasn't said, yeah, that was him, but she gives a description. Well, she can't say that was him because his face is covered. Again, all of the is circumstantial evidence. And I would expect the defense to be attacking every single piece of evidence that they

had at least mentioned in that affidavit because there are ways to poke holes in every single one of these pieces, right? Whether it be the DNA, I mean, this could have been something that he maybe touched it at some other time, transfer type DNA. It could have happened on a previous night, on a previous. stay or there may be issues with the DNA testing itself and I'm sure the defense will hire their own expert and do their own testing and if there's any issues they're going to bring it up so there's all sorts of ways of attacking evidence that initially seems like oh my goodness that's strong evidence

they've got him not necessarily some of the phone related information he could have been anywhere He lives eight to ten miles away from this location where the crime occurred. He could have just been eight to ten miles away. And the cell towers would have, he would have, his phone would have picked up the cell tower in the area of the residence of where the students were. That's nothing strange. There may be more. Again, I don't know what else there is.

There may be more that law enforcement has. That's a little more specific and can connect him to the location, but at least what I've seen in the affidavit, I see issues and problems, and I don't see that as enough, especially when you start looking at each piece on its own, which is what we would do. Yes, you have to look at everything all together, which is what the prosecution is going to do. They're going to say, you've got this piece, you've got that piece. Put them all together. My goodness, that's a very strong circumstantial evidence.

But our job as criminal defense attorneys is to break it up, break it apart, and start attacking every single piece separately and show the jury or the jury. the court in a prelim, the issues, the unreliability of that evidence. And for example, the shoes, the shoe prints, very common, right? A bushy eyebrows. My goodness, that's pretty common. If you ask me, most men are going to fall under that category. How do you narrow down the group of suspects if you're saying bushy eyebrows? That's not enough to identify and ID anyone. So yes, there are some issues here. And the sneakers, van sneakers. is what they're saying the shoe print by her door, what have you, in the direction she said

he was walking, came from. So it'll be interesting to see if we find out that he owned Vann's shoes or not. So we just don't know. Well, Laura Yeratzian, a defense attorney, criminal defense attorney, thanks as always for giving us your time and your expertise. We really appreciate it. And we hope you'll come back to talk about this another time. Thank you, and Jeanette. It's always a pleasure to be with you. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar. podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg and Michael Dininger. Bobby Zoki manages our YouTube channel. Kira Bronson handles our social media and Alyssa Fisher is our booking producer. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever else you get your

podcasts. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and we will see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.