By The Associated Press’s REBECCA BOONE
Because they believe the case depends on an unlawful genetic investigative procedure, the attorneys for a Pennsylvania man accused of murder in connection with the deaths of four University of Idaho students are requesting that a court exclude the majority of the evidence.
The defense team for Bryan Kohberger also argues that police wrongdoing contaminated the search warrants in the case. A portion of the two-day hearing, which began Thursday morning, will be closed to the public while they present their cases. Before the trial begins in August, their success might seriously undermine the prosecution’s case.
Kohberger was born and raised in Monroe County, attended Bethlehem Township’s Northampton Community College, and graduated from DeSales University in Upper Saucon Township with a bachelor’s and master’s degree.
He faces four murder charges in connection with the early morning killings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin in a rented house close to the Moscow, Idaho, campus on November 13, 2022. Last year, Kohberger refused to submit a plea when requested to do so, so a judge entered a not-guilty plea on his place.If Kohberger is found guilty, the prosecution has stated that they will pursue the death penalty.
When law enforcement employed a procedure known as Investigative Genetic Genealogy, or IGG, to find potential suspects, Kohberger’s lawyers claim that this was a violation of his constitutional rights.
In a court filing, lawyers Jay Weston Logsdon and Ann Taylor stated that without that initial constitutional violation, there would be no investigation into him. They went on to say that without IGG, there would be no case, no demand for his phone records, no monitoring of his parents’ house, and no DNA extracted from the trash outside. Everything in the affidavit should be removed as the IGG analysis is the source of this issue.
When DNA recovered from a crime scene doesn’t turn up anything in the usual law enforcement databases, the IGG process frequently begins. At that point, researchers might examine every variation, or single nucleotide polymorphism, present in the DNA sample. In order to find potential relatives of the individual whose DNA was discovered at the scene, those SNPs, or snippets, are subsequently uploaded to a genealogy database such as GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA.
The sheath of a knife that was discovered in the house where the students were tragically stabbed had contact DNA, or trace DNA, according to investigators in Kohberger’s case. Kohberger was identified as a potential suspect by the FBI using the IGG technique on that DNA.
The use of IGG is not unconstitutional, according to Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson and the rest of the prosecution team, who point out that Kohberger’s family members willingly gave their own DNA to a genetic genealogy firm. In court documents, they have also maintained that case law is unambiguous: Defendants do not have a legitimate right to privacy regarding DNA left at the scene of a crime.
The defense team also claims that when law enforcement officials requested that the court issue search warrants for Kohberger’s apartment, his parents’ home, his car, his cellphone, and even his DNA, they either willfully or carelessly lied or omitted important information after Kohberger was identified as a potential suspect. They also want all of that evidence excluded from the trial.
The public is not privy to specifics regarding the alleged police misconduct, though, as 4th District Judge Steven Hippler has sealed the majority of those court files and numerous court records pertaining to the IGG evidence. The judge says he doesn’t want prospective jurors to be swayed by hearing about any evidence that might not be admitted in trial, so a portion of the hearing beginning Thursday will take place behind closed doors.
A group of news outlets, including The Associated Press, petitioned the judge on Wednesday to reevaluate the secrecy.
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