Idaho judge rules Bryan Kohberger can face the death penalty

Judge Steven Hippler ruled Wednesday that Bryan Kohberger, the man charged with killing four University of Idaho students, can face the death penalty.

Kohberger is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022. Prosecutors announced that they intend to seek the death penalty in 2023, and Kohberger's defense team has been fighting to get it removed ever since.

12 separate motions filed with the court by the defense were argued before Judge Hippler on November 7, 2024.

The motions, and subsequent arguments, seek to remove the death penalty based on several different factors ranging from the aggravators in this case that make Kohberger eligible for the death penalty in Idaho to the very grounds used to justify the use of the death penalty itself.

Kohberger’s public defense team attacked the death penalty from multiple angles, arguing it is arbitrary, unconstitutional, violates international law and that waiting on death row for years or decades wondering if you’d get lethal injection or firing squad if the state couldn’t get the right drugs was unfair.

One of the motions filed by the defense sought to strike the state's notice on grounds of "means of execution." The defense argues that the methods of execution used in Idaho, lethal injection or the firing squad, violate Kohberger's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, because "Defendant asserts that Idaho currently does not have the ability to kill a person by lethal injection and the firing squad is not only currently unavailable, it is cruel and unusual."

In the 54-page ruling, Hippler provided several reasons why Kohberger's defense team arguing against the death penalty is insufficient.

The first one being that the motion is not "ripe," which is the part of the "justiciability that 'asks whether there is any need for court action at the present time.'"

The other reasons are lethal injection and the firing squad have been found constitutional and the defendant has failed to identify an alternate execution method.

A facility for the firing squad has not yet been built at the Ada County Jail.

Kohberger's trial is currently scheduled for August 2025.

👉🏻 Read ruling here

Source: boisestatepublicradio.org, Katie Kloppenburg; idahonews.com November 21, 2024

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