Bryan Kohberger’s barbecue defense is led by a Moscow PD detective in the Idaho student murders

Two days of hearings on defense motions in the quadruple homicide case against the University of Idaho suspects Bryan Kohberger It ended without any official rulings, but it did reveal new details ahead of a much-anticipated trial later this year.

The defense appeared to confirm early reports that Kohberger had been spotted wearing rubber gloves In his parents’ kitchen when tactical officers broke in to arrest him. A key eyewitness is accused of having memory problems, drinking and giving a conflicting story.

The defense confirmed that Kohberger arrived at the school in Pullman, Washington, in June 2022, and the judge issued both sides a stern warning about what he expected from their professional disclosures.

Judge Steven Hippler said he would take arguments under advisement and announce his rulings at a later date. Here are some key takeaways from the two-day hearing.

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Is there an expectation of privacy regarding DNA left at a crime scene?

Kohberger’s defense wants investigative genetic genealogy evidence suppressed. Their arguments, however, did not seem to sway the judge.

“I struggle with the idea that DNA is gone At a crime scene, that privacy is expected,” Judge Steven Hippler told Kohberger’s lead attorney, Anne Taylor.

Later, as she tried to attack other elements of the probable cause statement, it came back to DNA as the obvious deciding factor.

Hippler questioned whether the DNA found on the knife sheath under the victim’s body was insufficient to support probable cause on its own.

Idaho murders: Bryan Kohberger defense crushes credibility of eyewitnesses, memory problems

“Isn’t that a probable cause every day and twice on Sunday?” he asked.

She said not in this case, but experts say the DNA evidence is probably Kohberger’s biggest threat.

“The cell phone records certainly make it look bad, even though the fact is that the phone was turned off at the time of the shutdown murders It’s helping him,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago attorney who followed the case. But I think DNA is sinking its Bismarck. “

Problems with fathers?

Taylor questioned the credibility of an eyewitness, a surviving housewife who police said saw a masked man walking away after hearing the sounds of a struggle.

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Despite the massacre, she went to bed. Police were not contacted until hours later, when a friend called 911 from one of the survivors’ phones late in the morning.

In one of her statements to the police, as read by Taylor in court, she said the following:

“I don’t know if it was real or if my mind was just, like, playing with me,” Taylor said. “But from what I think I heard, someone was crying in the bathroom.”

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The witness also said that she heard a certain victim running up and down the stairs. But, according to Taylor, she couldn’t, because that victim was killed in her bed upstairs.

And the mark outside the witness’s bedroom door, Taylor said, was not repeated anywhere else in the house. She asked why it was even included in the police statement.

Deputy Latah County Prosecutor Ashley Jennings defended the eyewitness, telling the court that the most important thing that came from her in the probable cause statement was her description of the suspect as a white male, slim and tall. And that part of her story never changed.

DNA from two unknown males

Taylor said forensics police took two more DNA samples from the unknown males, one on the handrail and one on the glove outside.

With the source of the DNA in question, she said it could mean Kohberger was not connected to the crime at all.

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Hippler seemed unconvinced as Taylor tried to argue that it was invalid probable cause used to arrest her client.

“His DNA is still on the sheath of the knife. That’s a problem, advice,” he said.

Countdown to Kohberger’s arrest

Before Kohberger’s arrest at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, the FBI arranged for a local garbage collector to pick up his family’s trash and submit it for testing, the court heard.

The lead detectives in the case were in Pennsylvania at the time, but watched local authorities carry out the tactical raid via a video feed broadcast from the drone, Payne testified.

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Jay Logsdon, one of Kohberger’s defense attorneys, questioned the legitimacy of the SWAT raid on the home and said “sniper” police watched Kohberger walk around the home. He brought up the arrest of a white supremacist mass shooter Dylann’s roofbut Hippler interrupted him before he could illustrate the point.

“As they explained in their own statement, they’re basically watching Mr. Kohberger as he moves around his house, via sniper,” Logsdon said. “They were perfectly safe and there was just no reason to knock on the door for a second after they were yelling from their Bearcat.”

“There are two questions,” interjected Judge Hippler. “There’s officer safety. There’s also the concern about destroying evidence.”

Logsdon downplayed concerns that law enforcement thought Kohberger would destroy any evidence.

“The only thing they knew was that he was walking from room to room and he had kitchen gloves on,” Logsdon said.

“That’s not all they knew,” Hippler said, adding that he would not go into further detail in open court.

Latah County District Attorney Bill Thompson said there were additional details known to law enforcement that were “quite incriminating” and warranted a swift entry.

“They had a no-legs warrant, signed by a judge, that allowed them to enter Kohberger’s residence using what they thought was a reasonable means to ensure the integrity of the evidence and the safety of the officers,” said Paul Mauro, a former NYPD inspector who was the close following case.

“Whether they observed him with snipers or not has no legal impact. They perceive me as a collateral, dilatory tactic on the part of the defense.

“Get on with it.”

Kohberger’s shopping list

The defense argued that investigators improperly obtained Kohberger Amazonian history without a warrant. Plaintiffs countered that a third-party business record is not protected by an expectation of privacy.

Logsdon called the US a “Panopticon,” essentially a large prison with few guards and a surveillance state, and warned that privacy rights should be protected.

Experts say Amazon is allowed to voluntarily provide the records as part of established case law.

“It’s a climb for the defense,” Stoltmann told Fox News Digital.

The results

Hippler said he has not yet decided whether the defense will get a Franks hearing, but told both sides to send him a list of available dates within the next three weeks.

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His decisions on most other proposals are expected to be announced in the near future. In response to a defense request that the court either order prosecutors to hand over additional expert witness disclosures or face sanctions, Hippler said both sides should “over-explain.”

“A word of caution,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a dissonance between what the expert thinks they’re going to talk about and what the attorney understands from that expert.”

Kohberger is scheduled to stand trial later this year in the murders of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.

At the time of the murders, Kohberger was studying for a Ph.D. in criminology nearby Washington State Universityabout 10 miles across the state line. The victims were undergraduate students at the University of Idaho.

Latah County Judge Ivan Judge entered a plea on behalf of Kohberger at his May 2023 plea deal. You could face it capital punishment if convicted.