Over the weekend I got to listen to a Court TV Podcast episode in which journalist and lawyer Vinnie Pollitan discusses the upcoming trial of Brian Kohberger, who has been charged with the murder of four University of Idaho students–Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle–at their off-campus home. Kohberger is a stranger to the victims and no direct evidence links him to the crime; one survivor has a description of a masked intruder, but it is rather generalized (she described his build and his eyebrows.)
You can watch, or listen to, the episode here:
One thing that is immediately evident is Pollitan’s ire at the court’s decision to seal the pretrial proceedings, which of course means we don’t know what is being argued in the motions. This is a rare proceeding nationwide, and in Idaho in particular; the United States often allows cameras in courtrooms and has no sub judice rule, which means that the media can and does report on court proceedings while they are ongoing. That this upsets journalists, who report on sensational, high-profile cases like this one, is obvious, but it seems that the court prefers this unusual step to having disclosures that could taint the jury pool (consider that the motion to change venue here was already approved, and the parties are banking on the ability of finding folks who have not heard of this case).
Meanwhile, the defense is hard at work trying to get the DNA evidence in this case suppressed. Its importance cannot be overrated given the paucity of physical or testimonial evidence. The only forensic link between the suspect and the crime scene was a tan leather knife sheath found at the scene, which, it is estimated, the perpetrator dropped while struggling with one of the victims. The knife itself has never been recovered, but the button snap of the sheath had a single source of male DNA on it.
The first investigative step was uploading the DNA from the sheath onto public genealogy sites, only some of which collaborate with law enforcement. The FBI built family trees of the genetic relatives to the suspect DNA and sent over a tip to investigate Kohberger. None of this, however, was mentioned in the affidavit for probable cause. Instead, the police based its probable cause on surveillance video showing a vehicle like the suspect’s close to the murder scene. An expert narrowed down the make, model, and approximate year of the vehicle, and campus police from a nearby university found such a vehicle was registered to Kohberger. DNA gathered from the Kohberger family home was found to be a familial match to the sheath DNA.
According to the affidavit, investigators homed in on Kohberger, at the time a Ph.D student in criminology at nearby Washington State University, by using surveillance video of a vehicle in the area around the time of the killings, physical descriptions of the suspect from a surviving witness and his cell phone location data. Further, detectives took DNA from the trash at the Kohberger family’s home in Pennsylvania and compared it to the DNA on the sheath, and identified “a male as not being excluded as the biological father of Suspect Profile,” according to the affidavit. Kohberger was then arrested on December 30, 2022.
The defense argues that the IGG (investigative genetic genealogy) evidence was insufficient for furnishing probable cause, and the prosecution responds that the IGG evidence is irrelevant, since the search warrant was sought and obtained on different grounds. I think the prosecution will have the upper hand here: the evidence will not be suppressed because the car identification is an independent source of evidence, which is an exception to the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine (see Murray v. U.S. for a similar example). Still, assuming only the genetic genealogical DNA evidence goes away and all they have is a vehicle and the suspect’s bushy eyebrows, it might arouse suspicion among the jury that they ended up with this defendant, a stranger to the victims and the area.
No comment yet, add your voice below!