Bryan Kohberger’s defense lawyers are demanding that the prosecutors of the murder case make the DNA evidence public. The link between Kohberger and the DNA found on the crime scene was connected through the genetic genealogy process, a procedure which the defense attorneys claim is flawed. Furthermore, Kohberger’s defense team claims that the DNA was “illegally gathered” and should be dismissed altogether, via ABC News.
The DNA evidence is allegedly some of the only non-circumstantial evidence in the case.
Elissa Massoth, one of Kohberger’s lawyers, said, “This matter is of utmost importance to Mr. Kohberger’s right to a public hearing,” in a new court filing that petitioned the court to make public records that detail the way the DNA evidence was collected.
Kohberger, accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022, still awaits his trial, scheduled for this coming August. He was additionally investigated in an earlier home invasion a year prior to the murders at an address less than 10 miles away from the home of the UI victims, according to ABC.
The police report details a masked intruder entering the Pullman house holding a knife. However, Kohberger is no longer a person of interest in this case. “We have no reason or evidence to believe he was involved in this burglary at this time,” Pullman police told ABC News.
A pretrial hearing for the UI murder case, scheduled for Jan. 23, is “expected to address a series of outstanding evidentiary issues that could include the DNA issue,” as claimed by ABC.
The DNA evidence was collected from a knife sheath left behind at the crime scene and was later matched to a cheek swab authorities collected from Kohberger.
“The FBI originally loaded the DNA profile from the knife sheath onto publicly available genealogy sites. The FBI went to work, building family trees of the genetic relatives to the suspect DNA left at the crime scene in an attempt to identify the contributor of the unknown DNA, and then sent a tip to investigate Kohberger, according to prosecutors,” according to CNN.
Idaho law gives the defendant the right to request access to evidence and testimony intended for use at trial. Kohberger’s defense attorneys argued that without publicly available evidence, they have no way to prepare to fight in court.
“The expert issues are complex, involving many different facets of DNA, cellular data, cell tower coverage and drive testing, car identification, crime scene and blood spatter analysis, fingerprint analysis, forensic pathology and electronic device analysis of the suspect, victims, and alternative suspects, and social media accounts,” the defense lawyers said.
The prosecutors responded by asking the judge to deny Kohberger’s request. They claim to have been compliant on all court ordered witness disclosures. In response to the lack of DNA expert opinions or reports, they denied the claim’s legitimacy, saying, “Exhibits S-15 through S-25 all relate to Idaho State Police Forensic Lab experts.”
A precedent set in 1963 Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland means that the prosecutors must turn over all evidence.
“There will be hell to pay, though, if the state has it and hasn’t provided it yet, especially since the matter is over a year old,” David Gelman, a New Jersey-based defense attorney, said to Fox News. “There’s a strategic reason the defense is doing this: If the judge agrees that the prosecution hasn’t complied with its discovery obligations, he can sanction the prosecution. And one of those sanctions may be taking the death penalty off the table.”
Ultimately, if the prosecution delays in handing over the evidence, it may save Kohberger’s life.
Rebekah Weaver can be reached at arg-news@uidaho.edu.