Bryan Kohberger: 3 Key Developments In Idaho Student Murders

he's badgering the witness he's misstating his testimony and I object the witness testified he didn't care if the information was correct judge following contentious hearings in Brian cober's case over a survey of prospective jurors you know let's take down the toone a little bit judge judge issues a key ruling and a former police officer joins cober's defense team in the hope of showing he didn't kill for University of Idaho students I have three key developments in Brian cobber case thanks for joining me for Crime fix I'm anginette Levy there's been a little bit of movement in Brian cober's case just a little bit remember that big blowup over an expert for cober's defense team reaching out to prospective jurors and asking them questions about what they knew about the case Leah County prosecutor Bill Thompson was hopping mad and wanted the survey stopped here's what he said about it so I I don't want this to become personal between Miss Taylor and myself we are not alleging Miss Taylor has done anything wrong we are dealing with reality that this survey was conducted on as we understand 400 I'll say innocent citizens of Leah County who were forced that information that they may or may not have had about this case before they were called by the survey takers and they are loaded questions some of the questions are factually wrong they simply aren't true that's what we're here about one specific question that Dr Brian Edelman a trial consultant hired by the defense opposed to 400 jurors in lah County contained false information you acknowledge false that Mr cber allegedly stalked one of the victims that's false you know that to be false which one did Mr cobber allegedly stalked one of the victims yes I was trying not to say that but you but you knew you knew that was false I did Dr Adelman explained his methods and said there was a reason he asked the questions he was testing for bias in Leah County which has a population of about 40,000 people that's pretty small Thompson took a very sarcastic tone with Dr Adelman after Adelman said he felt his Integrity had been questioned by Thompson I'm sorry if your feelings hurt about us raising this issue I see you were almost breaking down few minutes we were talking about slide number 33 uh oh slide number 31 that's not the intent and it's certainly I was I'm surprised to see that reaction from an exper expert such as yourself so I apologize for that I I accept your apolog but the idea of after working really hard 15 years to develop a credible reputation and being told watching on a zoom that I am tainting the diry pool and poisoning the JY pool and contaminating the JY pool by doing what's required and standard I'm not crying I'm angry yes it doesn't and please go ahead and be as angry as you like and you continue re work for the defense in this case meanwhile the defense took offense to Thompson accusing them of violating the Court's non-dissemination order an order the defense actually requested we didn't violate the non-dissemination order you know the the information that now he's calling facts you know flip-flopping between whether or not it's a a false fact or a fact that's that's in the survey the information that was put in the survey is based on the public record and information the way that State and State actors put information into the public record that is now been disseminated and we have not violated that order and I do resent being accused of that now after all of that back and forth the sarcasm the hand ringing and the tension judge judge has ruled that the defense expert survey can continue without modification judge judge writing information that formed the basis for six of the nine questions at issue came from the probable cause affidavit a document filed in this case that is not sealed the defense may continue its survey without modifications to the survey questions judge judge also wrote the non-dissemination order does not prohibit the attorneys involved in the case or their Agents from making extrajudicial statements about information contained in the public record judge judge also wrote that that that question containing false information the one discussing coburger possibly stalking one of the victims and following them on social media the subject matter of those questions has been discussed in quote media items but are now part of the public court record so they don't violate the non-dissemination order the family of victim Kaye gonalves of course has not been shy about sharing their feelings about what's been going on in the casee in a statement the family threw a little bit of shade at judge judge quote with the most far-reaching gag order in the country not allowing a victim's attorney to speak while letting the president of the University of Idaho write a book detailing facts of the case the judge does not seem to understand the gag order himself now his logic is since some of the survey questions violated the gag order they are part of the quote public record so he is now allowing the defense to continue to do a survey that may potentially Tain a jury the survey is a Roose being used by the defense in an attempt to keep the trial out of lto County we pray the trial stays with the citizens of Leah County and Justice is served I want to bring Bill Gallagher in he's defended 13 death penalty cases bill you and I talked weeks and weeks before this big brewhaha about the jury survey that the defense should conduct a survey in your opinion then they got called on the carpet for it now the judge is saying okay you can continue with it so what's your reaction action to the judge's ruling uh the reaction is I think that everyone sort of may have overreacted before they found out what was exactly going on I'm sure the judge immediately that the defense was somehow poisoning the jury pool um and had given them information that the judge from public view um and now upon consideration and looking at exactly what these jurors were given to and listening to the arguments is real majority of those questions were taken from public documents um and that you really weren't trying to poison the jurors but really find out what um they're thinking they know about this case and can they even walk into the courtroom and give this gentleman a fair trial the prosecutor contended he wasn't upset about the survey but he said he was upset and the judge appeared to be upset as well about the fact that there was information included in the survey that that wasn't true um you know the the question about did you hear that Brian coburger was stalking one of the victims and then there was a question about whether or not he was following them on social media or Instagram or something to that effect they implied that probably wasn't true as well um so you know is that that big of a deal though he's he's contacting 400 people out of 40,000 in lto County he gets up there and he explains what his methodology was and I mean this is kind of of how how a survey would work I mean yeah the information was false he's saying look I don't care you did a survey but you put false information out there and this violated the non-dissemination order what what was your take on that argument okay um so there may be lots of strategic reasons the way the questions were asked to those jurors I I'm sure this was not just uh three lawyers sitting in an office and saying hey what would you like to ask um this is an expert in the field field and I'm sure there's a strategy behind asking those specific questions to get information um to this judge about whether a fair trial can happen in this County because that's really what they're trying to find out just take a survey come back and say look at these result results and the answers we're getting indicate that this is not a fake place where you can now get a fair trial because um I get the anger but um I think it comes you're not poisoning the case um you are not affecting um the prosecutor's ability to try this case and if they were so concerned about this getting in the media then this would have been some form of a sealed proceeding you wouldn't have the entire public in there giving them the opportunity to repeat that same information in newspapers on radio on podcasts if you were that concerned about it with the prosecutor so I'm not necessarily sure this prosecutor um that anger or or our level of discomfort um is truly genuine I want to take a short break from this update on Brian cober's case to tell you about something that can help you learn more about the people you interact with every day in your life it's a great website and it's called truthfinder.com truthfinder is one of the world's largest public record search Services truthfinder has just one goal and that is to help you and me learn the truth about the people we meet each day here's how it works just log on to truth .c and put in a name within minutes maybe even seconds you will get reports that include phone numbers addresses friends family and criminal records of the people you're searching and even more it will also show you sex offender statuses for people who might live nearby the cases I cover each day make it incredibly clear that you have to do everything you can to keep you and your loved ones safe so right now crime fixed viewers can get 50% off of confidential background reports at truthfinder.com LC crifix log on to truthfinder.com LC crifix and start accessing information about almost anyone Bill Dr Adelman said in his testimony he'd never seen a prosecutor get up and refer the public to a document a pel cause affidavit saying you know we'll be publishing that and you can get information from there and see the facts Etc um I've seen prosecutors do a lot worse than that at press conferences so did you really think that was a big deal no I don't think it was really a big deal I think though that what the expert was probably trying to do is just push back a little bit on the prosecutor saying you too have been disseminating information out into the public that they've used or misused um so you really shouldn't be cons concerned about some of the questions we're asking these um people out in the public of course this whole survey is about the defense wanting to move the trial out of Leah County and that motion will be heard later in the summer after the survey is complete and after the defense and the prosecution can file briefing on the matter now to the second recent development Brian koberger supplied information to the court as part of his possible Alibi he says he was out driving around the morning that Mattie Mogan Kayla gelvis Ethan chapen and Zanna kodal were brutally stabbed in a house off campus we knew the part about him being out driving we knew about that months ago but now there is newer information about his habit of going out late at night to gaze at the stars and the moon and to even go hiking or running and an expert who the defense says is helping coburger with his defense is a former police officer SRA bio says he spent 20 years in law enforcement as a SWAT operator a homicide sergeant and he also directed fugitive missions now he works as an expert and he also hosts a true crime podcast called socialite crime Club Ray typically works for the prosecution but not in this case he's working for the defense the defense says that Ray's testimony will show that quote cober's mobile device was south of Pullman Washington and west of Moscow Idaho on November 13 2022 that Brian cober's mobile device did not travel east on the Moscow pman Highway in the early morning hours of November 13th that's the long road that connects Pullman to Moscow the defense says that coburger went to wawaii Park in Washington it was a place where he went to spend a lot of time while the prosecution said that cober's phone was likely off between the hours of 2:47 and 4:48 a.m. that's the time period in which they believe the murders occurred the defense will rely on C to tell the jury there was nothing nefarious about the phone not communicating with the network that morning that it wasn't cober's white Elantra seen at the King Road House the morning of the murders now the gon Salis family responded again on Facebook quote we have been waiting on this information for months and it has finally arrived it is so hard not knowing anything about the case and you find you have to cling to dates motions and hearings in order to figure out anything a big part of this has been waiting on The Alibi information now that it is here we feel even more confident in the prosecution of the defendant the defense's claim is that the defendant was driving late at night hiking SL running and stargazing we are not sure why it has taken over a year for this to come out as those don't seem to be complicated activities we believe that if this Alibi had any weight it would have been submitted months ago it is also in direct conflict with the probable cause affidavit that states that the defendants phone was turned off between 2:47 a.m. and 4:48 a.m. so if the defendant was driving around and there is cell phone information that he was in a different place it would be either before or after the times of the murders hence not really an alibi we continue to look forward to Justice in this case and can now put this part of the proceeding behind us thank you for all your support for our family and now our third key development is an update on how much this huge murder case has cost and it sounds really harsh to even talk about it because four young people were murdered but this is a big case federal and state agencies came together to assist in the investigation and the cost is a grim reality with taxpayers footing the bill and the governor of Idaho allocating money to help the city of Moscow cover the cost Kevin fixler is an investigative reporter with the Idaho Statesman and he did some digging and came up with some numbers I want to talk to you a little bit about um the cost piece that you wrote um there had been some other people who had submitted requests to the court and as you know it's been really frustrating covering this case because everything um with any substance to it is filed under seal but you were able to actually get some documents other people had requested documents from the court and they were denied about the the billing and things of that nature so tell me a little bit about the the cost piece that you did and what you found when you did some digging about how much this has cost the state of Idaho um I really didn't rely upon the court system in order to get these records uh I went to uh almost a dozen public agencies uh between the University of Idaho Le talk County uh Moscow city um on and on Idaho State Police and in order to get all this information uh I confirmed details with the governor's office was able to vet information through uh the legislature and inform or the uh funds they had guaranteed to the university uh so I filed across a number of different uh Idaho agencies uh I did get a couple documents from the court but really didn't rely upon them and the the high level takeaway from this is that already uh as far as known costs uh the cobg case or the Idaho 4 case however you want to think about it the investigation before we knew who Brian cober was uh we stand currently at just over $3.6 million uh that includes the money to uh house him in the jail beneath the courthouse includes uh the cost for his Public Defense which is actually paid for by the citizens of lto County and it includes uh you know 600 hours of overtime that Moscow PD worked uh during the first uh six or seven weeks ahead of his arrest uh it backfills a lot of the funds that uh Idaho State Police had expended uh during that investigation one thing it does not include is uh any information about how much money the FBI contributed or spent uh the federal agency doesn't speak to that uh they don't as a matter of policy they don't um disclose any of their methods uh including the costs associated with uh such investigations the cost is not going to go down it's just going to continue to go up as well so uh we're at least a year out from trial there's no trial date set yet so that cost is certainly going to climb and as you mentioned the citizens of lto County are are footing the bill for his defense so as the trial date approaches there will be increased I'm sure security costs added as well because people such as you and me will be traveling there there will be a lot of media there and just an enhanced security presence where wherever the trial might be held yeah I mean that's a good point we still don't know if uh there will be a venue change that's something that defense is seeking and the prosecution is fighting uh that relates to that survey issue that we don't still have an order from the judge on that uh but to your points uh you know this is a death penalty case Idaho is one of the 24 states with an active death penalty option uh prosecutors have already said they intend to seek that and what I will say is there are many studies uh including in Washington and Oregon our neighboring states uh there's another in in Oklahoma and repeatedly it shows that death penalty cases cost at least on average a million dollar more than in cases uh uh where there's a murder uh and it's aggravated and there's an opportunity to seek the death penalty in those cases that prosecutors did not seek that it was much less money and that doesn't even contemplate U my story and also this conversation the millions of dollars that will be spent over the next decades if he is convicted and the appeals process that will ensue so according to the information that Kevin has compiled and the numbers he has this case has cost taxpayers at least $3.6 million and after Kevin and I spoke he got a little bit more information and it turns out on top of that $3.6 million that he discussed the flight transporting coburger from Pennsylvania to Idaho cost more than $22,000 and the cost as I mentioned will continue to rise and that's it for this edition of crime fix as we wrap up those three recent developments in Brian cober's case I'm an Janette Levy thanks so much for being with us we'll see you back here next time

Channel: Law&Crime Network

Views: 193,588

Keywords: law and crime, law and crime network, true crime, truecrime, true crime videos, court, trials, law&crime

Id: fDt4CsWFa00

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024