Prosecutors may call members of Bryan Kohberger's family to testify during trial

Alex Brizee, The Idaho Statesman on Mar 25, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

BOISE, Idaho — In the latest drop of court filings in Bryan Kohberger’s criminal case, the prosecution hinted that it might call members of the 30-year-old’s family to testify at his upcoming trial.

Latah County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Ashley Jennings asked in the Friday filing, which was published on the court’s website Monday, that if any members of Kohberger’s family are listed as witnesses for the prosecution that they be excluded from the courtroom until they testify. The prosecution has until April 21 to file its witness list.

Kohberger is charged with the first-degree murder of four University of Idaho students after prosecutors alleged he stabbed the students to death in November 2022. The victims were: Madison Mogen, of Coeur d’Alene, and Kaylee Goncalves, of Rathdrum, both 21; and Xana Kernodle, of Post Falls, and Ethan Chapin, of Mount Vernon, Washington, both 20.

Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington, just nine miles from where the three female victims lived with two other young women who went physically unharmed during the homicides. Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend and stayed over for the night.

If convicted, the prosecution intends to seek the death penalty.

This latest filing by the prosecution is in response to a filing by the defense, which asked last week that if any of Kohberger’s immediate family — consisting of his mother, father and two sisters — attend the trial they are allowed in the courtroom.

“Mr. Kohberger’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial would be violated if his family is excluded,” according to the March 17 filing signed by defense attorney Elisa Massoth.

Jennings disagreed and wrote in the response that while Kohberger has a right to a public trial it “does not extend to defendant’s choosing whom sits in the courtroom.”

“Defendant requests that members of his family be granted the same rights as the victim’s families,” Jennings wrote. “However, the ‘immediate families of homicide victims’ have constitutional and statutory rights to attend... . There is no comparable constitutional or statutory provisions affording a defendant’s family these same rights.”

The back-and-forth over courtroom attendees started in February, when the prosecution filed a motion asking 4th District Judge Steven Hippler for “guidance” regarding who the court recognizes as the victims’ immediate family members and to allow those members — regardless of when or whether they are scheduled to testify — to remain in the courtroom for the entirety of the planned months-long trial.

Typically, witnesses expected to be called to the stand cannot be present during others’ testimony until they have testified themselves — unless they are the victim’s immediate family members.

In their motion, the prosecution asked that all members of the Goncalves, Mogen, Kernodle and Chapin families listed in their filing be permitted for the entire trial. The names of the students’ family members are redacted but their relationship to the victims is listed.

While parents and siblings are considered immediate family members under state law, courts have been less clear on grandparents, stepparents or stepsiblings. The prosecution is asking that Goncalves’ grandparents and Mogen’s stepmother, stepfather and stepsister be allowed in the courtroom.

This was a concern raised during another high-profile murder trial in Idaho.

During Lori Vallow Daybell’s criminal trial, 7th District Judge Steven Boyce ruled that the grandparents of Vallow Daybell’s son Joshua “JJ” Vallow — who Vallow Daybell was later convicted of killing — didn’t meet the legal definition of immediate family members, East Idaho News reported. But Boyce did allow JJ’s grandmother to stay in the courtroom as a representative for her grandson.

Kohberger’s attorneys said last week they didn’t object to the court allowing immediate members of the victims’ families, including grandparents or stepparents, to be present in the courtroom. But they also asked that relatives be prohibited from wearing T-shirts with the victims’ pictures or messages that promote the state’s new firing squad execution law, which members of the Goncalves family have previously worn at hearings.

“This must not be allowed in any future courtroom proceedings,” the filing read. “Case law from other states have noted that ‘it would seem that the wearing of such buttons or T-shirts is not a good idea because of the possibility of prejudice which might result.’"

_____