Bryan Kohberger’s new lawyer targets guilty plea constitutionality

Bryan Kohberger’s newest lawyer says upcoming filings and a potential evidentiary hearing will shed new light on the Idaho student murders case while their immediate legal fight concerns the constitutionality of the plea his client is attempting to withdraw.

“We think the [amended] PCR and evidentiary hearing will naturally address some of the outstanding and unanswered questions,” Jason Goldman, a New York-based attorney who is joining Kohberger’s team, told Fox News Digital Monday. “That said, the main priority right now is to scrutinize the constitutional issues surrounding Bryan’s plea.”

Kohberger, in a handwritten petition for post-conviction relief filed in July, told the court he had ineffective counsel, that his guilty plea was “not knowingly or voluntarily entered because it was induced by unkept promises” and that it was “not voluntarily entered because of threats asserted by petitioner’s (Kohberger’s) legal counsel.”

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“The circumstances surrounding Bryan’s plea — and what occurred in the critical days leading up to it — deserve careful, independent judicial scrutiny,” Goldman said. “Some of those circumstances are already part of the public record. Others are not.”

He also said that the support Kohberger receives from his family is part of why he agreed to join the case.

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“Most family and friends run for the hills when a loved one is quietly arrested, let alone charged with a highly-publicized murder,” he said. “The unwavering support Bryan maintains speaks volumes.” 

Judge Steven Hippler set a Nov. 13 deadline for Kohberger’s lawyers to file an amended petition which is expected to be written by attorneys and include more in-depth legal arguments than the handwritten petition Kohberger submitted in July.

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Idaho defense attorney Greg Rauch was appointed to represent Kohberger last month. Goldman said he would be joining as out-of-state counsel but is not yet officially on the docket.

Prosecutors have asked the judge to dismiss Kohberger’s petition on numerous grounds, but Kohberger’s lawyers filed a motion last week to have the judge removed from the case and to change the venue back to Moscow, Idaho, where the offices of Rauch and the Latah County Prosecuting Attorney are both located.

Kohberger had previously sought a change of venue out of Latah County, where the murders took place, which landed him in front of Hippler in Ada County.

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“The motion speaks for itself,” Goldman said. “We must ensure that the serious constitutional questions at play are heard in a forum whose impartiality and neutrality cannot be questioned.”

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The motion, signed by Rauch, questions Hippler’s impartiality, noting that he declined to give Kohberger’s former defense team more time when they said they were not finished with discovery review weeks before trial.

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Rauch also took issue with some of the language Hippler has since used to describe his client: “someone in whom the Court could identify nothing remaining that was ‘good or intrinsically human.'”

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Kohberger, 31, last year pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and a felony burglary charge for the 2022 stabbing deaths of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.

He did not give a motive.

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In a motion filed last week, Deputy Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Keith Scholl asked for a transcript of Kohberger’s July 2, 2025, change of plea hearing, in which Kohberger’s own words could be used to rebut the new claims in his petition.

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Hippler set a Nov. 13 deadline — four years to the day after the murders — for Kohberger’s legal team to file an amended petition and set aside two potential dates for a status conference and evidentiary hearing next year.

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Hearings on the recusal and venue motions could be held before then.

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“We will let the evidence and the filings speak in due course,” Goldman told Fox News Digital. “Stay tuned.”