Defense attorneys for Bryan Kohberger pleaded with a judge to take execution off the table if he's convicted.
"Idaho has got all these problems with executing somebody, and how is that right? Fair?" Kohberger's attorney, Anne Taylor, argued before the court Thursday, alluding to the botched execution of Idaho death row inmate Thomas Creech.
"To have him [Kohberger] sit on death row and say, 'Idaho is going to figure out how to kill you at some point in the future,' in a way that isn't cruel and unusual and in violation of your rights – I just don't think that the constitutional protections allow that to happen."
"It is anxiety, it is fear. It is the not knowing," she continued.
"The dehumanization that happens if somebody sits on death row when there's not a realistic way to execute" is unconstitutional, Taylor affirmed.
The state argued the uncertainty over the method of execution was not sufficient enough to take capital punishment off the table.
"There's no ex-post facto problem with that because you're not changing the penalty. The penalty is death. And so even if you assume that Idaho cannot do lethal injection, and even if you assume that the firing squad is unconstitutional, that's not to say that decades from now, there is not going to be a method by which the state could put him to death," prosecutors shot back.
"They [the defense] haven't even suggested, even today, an argument what a proper alternative would be," said prosecutors.
Ada County Judge Steven Hippler said he would consider the issue and make a determination in a written opinion with respect to its ruling.
Kohberger, 29, is slated to go to trial in August 2025.
Earlier this year, a judge sided with the defense when he granted their motion for a change of venue over fears Kohberger would be denied a fair trial in Latah County for the alleged killings of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at their off-campus apartment in November 2022.
Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle were roommates at the Moscow, Idaho residence, and Chapin – Kernodle's boyfriend – was spending the night, when they were slaughtered in their sleep, authorities determined.
Kohberger, a former Ph.D. student in criminology at Washington State University, was arrested for the murders six weeks later, after DNA evidence, surveillance video and cell phone records allegedly tied him to the scene of the crime.
He was taken into custody while visiting his parents in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30, 2022.
Kohberger pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in the college students' slayings.
A motive remains under investigation.
