Bryan Kohberger, the man accused in the murders of four University of Idaho students, was transported by plane Sunday morning from the Idaho county where he was being jailed to another county where his trial will be held.
Kohberger’s transfer from Latah County, where the killings took place in November 2022, to Ada County, more than 300 miles south and home to Idaho’s capital, Boise, comes after an order last week from the state Supreme Court to proceed with a change of venue.
The Ada County Sheriff’s Office booked him into the local jail. Kohberger’s trial is tentatively set for next June in Boise.
Latah County District Judge John Judge had ruled in favor of lawyers for Kohberger, 29, who argued a trial in Latah County would be unfair because of the intense pretrial publicity creating a “mob mentality” against the defendant.
At a hearing on the issue, defense experts provided research showing that the most effective way to prevent jury bias is by changing the trial’s location.
Given Latah County’s smaller population of 41,000, of which just over half are eligible to serve on a jury, Judge wrote in his order “it is far more likely” that residents there would have connections to someone involved in the case, making it “more likely” that they would have discussed it — and thus it would be “more difficult to make the identities of jurors private.”
