The Latah County Court tells Inside Edition Digital that Kohberger will be arraigned on Monday morning at 9 a.m.
Bryan Kohberger has been indicted by a grand jury for the University of Idaho murders.
The Latah County Court tells Inside Edition Digital that Kohberger will be arraigned on Monday morning at 9 a.m.
Hs preliminary hearing, scheduled for the last week of June, will be cancelled in light of this indictment by a Latah County grand jury.
In other developments, Kohberger is asking the judge to delay an upcoming hearing in a recently filed motion.
The accused murderer claims he needs the time because he plans to present expert testimony about what he calls the "intense" and "damaging effects" of the media coverage of his case.
BRYAN KOHBERGER GRAND JURY INDICTMENT
Kohberger’s motion was filed in connection with the media’s attempt to have a gag order put in place by the judge back in early January vacated. This order prohibits members of law enforcement and lawyers involved in the murder trial from speaking about the case to the press or public.
That gag order is being challenged by over 25 news organizations, and a scheduling hearing is set for May 22.
The lead lawyer representing those news outlets filed a motion for reconsiderations asking that the court agree to hear arguments sooner or issue a stay that would lift the gag order until arguments could be heard from the interested parties.
Kohberger and his lawyer responded to that motion with an objection while asking that the hearing on the matter be further delayed so that the murder suspect can build his own case against the media coverage..
He objects "on the grounds that the Media’s Motion to Vacate the Amended Nondissemination Order raises factual issues that Mr. Kohberger requires additional time to prepare," according to the court filing.
"Because the media coverage of this case has been intense, and because Mr. Kohberger plans on providing expert testimony on its damaging effects, Mr. Kohberger will require additional time and will not be prepared for such hearing on May 22, 2023," writes Kohberger's attorney Jay Weston Logdon.
The judge filed an initial nondissemination order on Jan. 3, just a few days after Kohberger’s arrest.
That initial order prohibited “investigators, law enforcement personnel, attorneys, and agents of the prosecuting attorney or defense … from making extrajudicial statements, written or oral, concerning this case, other than a quotation from or reference to, without comment, the public records of the case.”
An amended order filed 15 days later expands that ban to include “[t]he attorneys for any interested party in this case, including the prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, and any attorney representing a witness, victim, or victim’s family, as well as the parties to the above-entitled action, including but not limited to investigators, law enforcement personal, and agents for the prosecuting attorney or defense attorney.”
The Associated Press and over 20 other media companies filed a writ of mandamus in response to that amended order earlier this month, requesting that Idaho’s Second Judicial District vacate the nondissemination order.
A petition in support of that writ argues that the amended order “prohibits protected speech about a newsworthy event.”
The lawyers also write that the court “did not take any evidence or hold a hearing … made no factual findings that publicity will prejudice Mr. Kohberger, and ... did not consider any alternatives” before issuing that amended gag order.
The case has received national attention ever since the bodies of four University of Idaho students were found dead in a house just off the school’s Moscow campus.
Interest in the case only grew during the six weeks it took police to finally make an arrest in the case.
Kohberger was eventually apprehended in the early morning hours of Dec. 30 at his childhood home in Pennsylvania.
A probable cause affidavit said that his arrest came just days after investigators matched DNA found in trash pulled from Kohberger’s home to DNA found on a knife sheath discovered at the murder scene.
Authorities have yet to find the weapon that killed those students: Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.
Kohberger had previously told the public defender assigned to handle his extradition from Pennsylvania to Idaho that he expects to be exonerated of all charges at trial.
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