Bryan Kohberger’s murder trial will take place in Boise with a new judge: ‘We are prepared and ready’
Quadruple murder suspect Bryan Kohberger’s trial will take place in Boise next year.
The Idaho Supreme Court ordered the trial moved because of concerns that juror bias in Moscow could not guarantee Kohberger a fair trial in the killing of four University of Idaho students, according to a recently released court decision.
The decision orders Fourth District Judge Steven Hippler to preside over the rest of the proceedings, rather than transferring the Latah County judge who has been presiding over the case since 2022. The Supreme Court order also states Kohberger must be transferred to Ada County custody pending trial, which is set to take place sometime in June 2025.
Kohberger is charged with the November 2022 killings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were stabbed to death in a home near the University of Idaho campus. He is facing the death penalty.
The Ada County Courthouse where his trial will take place has held a number of high-profile murder trials in the last few years.
Lori Vallow Daybell was tried and sentenced in Boise to life in prison for the killings of her two children in Rexburg, Idaho. Their bodies were found on husband Chad Daybell’s property in 2020. He received a death sentence at the Ada County Courthouse in June.
“We cannot comment on the decision, but we are prepared and ready to do our parts and help our sister courts,” Ada County Trial Court Administrator Sandra Barrios-Lovewell said in a statement. “There’s been a number of significant trials in the past few years, and we are confident we can do so successfully again.”
Hippler is an administrative judge, but also handles felony cases. He once sentenced a 29-year-old mother to life in prison without parole for abusing her 9-year-old son so badly he died at a Boise hospital in 2020.
He’s also presided over the second post-conviction appeal of Erick Hall, who was sentenced to death for killing an airline attendant on the Boise greenbelt in 2000, and then sentenced to death again for strangling a woman and leaving her body in the foothills.