USA - Kohberger and victims (ID)

USA - Idaho. Interesting controversy after the non-condemnation to death of Bryan Kohberger

July 5, 2025:

05/07/2025 - Idaho. Interesting controversy after the non-condemnation to death of Bryan Kohberger, 30, white.

He killed more people than the 9 people (8 men and 1 woman) currently on the state's death row.

On 2 July, Judge Steven Hippler noted the agreement between the prosecution and the defendant, and on 23 July he will formalise the sentence of four life sentences without parole to be served consecutively for the young criminology graduate who pleaded guilty to stabbing four University of Idaho students to death: Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.

The events took place on 13 November 2022, in the home the four victims shared.

The prosecution says it pursued the deal with the defendant not because it was short of evidence, but because of the risk that the trial, with possible appeals, could take many years, creating unbearable stress for the victims' families. Some of the victims' relatives supported the idea of the settlement. The “risk” of this trial, from the prosecution's point of view, is that the defendant clearly appears to suffer from a form of emotional autism, a condition that already borders on mental illness according to current legal standards, and that in the coming years, with the foreseeable development of laws guaranteeing the intellectually disabled, could grant Kohberger exemption from the death sentence. The Latah County Prosecutor himself, Bill Thompson, also does not believe that the murders were premeditated, at least not all of them. The prosecutor added that nearly $4 million has already been spent on the pre-trial phase alone, and it is not appropriate to continue spending so much money that could instead be directed towards prevention, and victim support.

Noting that what is currently Idaho's worst murderer will not end up on death row where people who have committed crimes less serious than his are locked up, some editorials have raised the issue. The Lewiston Tribune headlined ‘If Kohberger escaped it, why do we have a death penalty?’. A good headline, which does not seem to wish the death penalty for Kohberger, but a reduced sentence for others. The newspaper recalls other cases of famous murderers who managed to avoid being sentenced to death:

James Eagan Holmes, who walked into a movie theatre in Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others. Three members of the jury failed to impose the death penalty. Gary Leon Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, sentenced to life imprisonment for 49 murders over 20 years, and suspected of 71 other murders. Hands off Cain has cited the case of Ridgway, the most prolific serial killer in recent US history, on other occasions, but with the promise of gradually finding the bodies of his victims, he is ensuring his survival. The Lewinston Tribune then mentions Theodore John “Ted” Kaczynski, the famous “Unabomber”, who, between 1978 and 1995, sent explosive postal packages, killing 3 people and injuring 23, and Eric Robert Rudolf, who planted a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, killing 2 people and injuring 111. Also remembered is South Carolina serial killer Todd Kohlhepp, convicted of killing at least 7 women, and who does not want to talk about other women he claims to have raped and murdered. The Lewinston Tribune's list closes with Jared Lee Lougher, who killed US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a federal judge, and 4 others, injuring 13. If these people escaped the death penalty, the Lewinston Tribune rhetorically asks, one wonders: who will suffer it? Here is a plausible hypothesis: a defendant who inspires no sympathy, perhaps an undocumented immigrant, who commits a series of heinous murders in a community large and wealthy enough to afford a capital trial. This is the very definition of arbitrariness and caprice. Otherwise, the death penalty would be nothing more than a bargaining chip for prosecutors. And if so, why does it exist?

"Instead, “The Blast” compared Kohberger's charges with those, all lower in severity, of the nine people sentenced to death in the state. It also gave space to the protests of the family members of Xana Kernodle and Kaylee Goncalves, who, unlike the explicit endorsement of the family members of Madison Mogen and Ethan Chapin in the agreement, expressed their frustration that the state would not seek to have Kohberger sentenced to death. The tone of “The Blast” is not as positive as that of the Lewinston Tribune, in the sense that they seem to wish for Kohberger's death sentence, but overall the controversy that this case has raised, and will certainly raise in the future (e.g. it could allow each of those sentenced to death an appeal centred on the non-proportionality of their sentence) puts at the centre of the discussion a fact known to those who study the subject, and which periodically resurfaces in media controversy and politics: in theory the death penalty should be reserved for the “worst of the worst” criminals, but in reality it is not.

https://www.lmtribune.com/opinion/if-kohberger-escaped-it-why-do-we-have-a-death-penalty-19859435
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fury-over-revelation-bryan-kohberger-153025649.html
https://theblast.com/698730/idaho-murders-victims-family-bryan-kohberger-plea-deal/