Bryan Kohberger is still awaiting trial for the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students. Unfortunately for a victim’s family, the recently announced change of venue will force them to reshape their expectations of closure.

Mr. Kohberger was a criminal justice Ph.D. candidate at Washington State University at Pullman, Washington, before he was charged with one count of burglary and four counts of murder in 2022. The charges came after Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were found stabbed to death in an off-campus house at Moscow, Idaho. Mr. Kohberger was connected to the murders thanks to DNA evidence from the button snap of a knife from the crime scene. 

The murders were believed to be carried out around 4 a.m. on November 13, 2022, but Mr. Kohberger says he was busy going for a stargazing drive that morning. If he’s convicted, Mr. Kohberger could face the death penalty.

The latest update to the highly anticipated case comes after Judge John Judge of Idaho’s 2nd Judicial District in Latah County, Idaho, made “probably, professionally, the most difficult decision [he’s] ever had to make.” He decided to grant Mr. Kohberger’s request for the venue to be changed from Moscow in “the interest of justice” given challenges of “personnel and space” as well as abundant “sensationalized and prejudicial” media coverage.

Moscow is home to the University of Idaho and the largest city in Latah County – a small county of about 39,517 people in the northern Idaho panhandle. Mr. Judge felt there would be significant issues with the jury pool since the county only has about 24,000 eligible jurors. In other words, a fair jury could not be found in such a small community so devastated by the tragedy.

“Some 67 percent of Latah County survey respondents reported believing Kohberger is guilty, with 51 percent of those indicating it would be hard for Kohberger to convince them of his innocence,” Judge wrote in his motion. “While [a] similar percentage answered these questions the same in Ada County, the impact of these numbers when considering population size are drastically different.”

Mr. Judge continued by saying Latah County’s limited Sheriff’s Office resources would present “security” issues for such a big case and added that the county lacked the clerks and venue space necessary for the trial.

Kohberger’s team has been arguing for the case to be moved away from Moscow for months, so this latest news is a big win for the defense.

“A fair and impartial jury cannot be found in Latah County owing to the extensive, inflammatory pretrial publicity, allegations made about Mr. Kohberger to the public by media that will be inadmissible at his trial, the small size of the community, the salacious nature of the alleged crimes, and the severity of the charges Mr. Kohberger faces,” Mr. Kohberger’s lead public defender, Anne Taylor, wrote in a January motion.

Even experts outside the case like well known TV legal analyst Dan Abrams have seemingly sided with the judge’s decision to change the venue.

“I think there ought to be a change of venue. You’re talking about a small community with a case that is enormous, that everyone in the community has opinions about already,” Abrams said long before Mr. Kohberger’s team won their appeal. “If there’s a case for a change of venue, this is probably it.”

Prosecutors, on the other hand, unsuccessfully argued that Latah County deserved to seat a jury after they were directly affected by the heinous crimes. They also felt that issues of jury familiarity with the case would not be solved by a venue change.

“It’s not Moscow, it’s not Latah County — it’s everywhere,” Prosecutor Bill Thompson previously said of the case commanding national and international headlines.

It’s hard to say whether this change of venue is fair. But the family of the late Ms. Kaylee Goncalves is “incredibly disappointed” by the judge’s ruling.

“The only good thing about this decision is it will be Judge Judge’s last decision in this case,” the Goncalves family said in a statement, referencing the fact that Mr. Judge’s motion included his desire to no longer be a part of the trial. “The family has always felt that Judge Judge favored the defense and it was a common theme that whatever the defense wanted or needed they got.

“The written decision is even more informative. If the Judge knew Latah County could not handle this trial for safety reasons, not enough court clerks, logistics and lacking space, why did we waste over a year in a county he knew was not going to handle the trial. The points he mentioned didn’t all of a sudden jump up and bite him in the rear.”

The Goncalves family also took issue with the “poor” cross examinations of expert witnesses – among other practices they deemed as problematic or useless – that led to the judge’s decision.

“As victims’s families you are left to just watch like everyone else and really you have little rights or say in the process and at the same time you are the most vested in the outcome,” the family wrote. “We have always felt that a fair and impartial jury could be found in Latah County and still believe that is where the trial deserves to be held to help the community heal. Thank you again for all your support and prayers!”

It’s unclear how long we’ll have to wait for the Idaho Supreme Court to decide where Kohberger’s trial is headed next, but the trial is currently scheduled for June 2025. The Supreme Court will also have to decide which presiding judge they want to re-assign the case to if they grant Mr. Judge’s wish to not continue with the trial.