Bryan Kohberger's defense attorney's may plan to argue that the knife sheath found at the crime scene where four University of Idaho students were killed was planted, according to prosecutors most recent court filing.
Kohberger is accused of entering an off-campus house and stabbing to death Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a Ph.D criminology student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, located about eight miles from the crime scene.
A knife sheath found at the crime scene had DNA that police and prosecutors say links back to Kohberger. However, in a recent court filing, prosecutors summed up defense strategy disclosed in an apparently sealed court filing, CNN reported.
"Instead of challenging the conclusion that the DNA on the knife sheath belonged to Defendant, the defense's expert disclosures reveal that the defense plans to argue the DNA on the knife sheath does not prove Defendant was ever at the crime scene and the knife sheath itself could have been planted by the real perpetrator," CNN reported the filing states.
CNN reports that the filing goes on to state that the defense expert will testify that "[t]here is good support that Mr. Kohberger's DNA was found on Item 1.1, a swab from the knife sheath." However, CNN also notes that no response from the defense has been made public, and no further information about the expert is included in the filing.
At the end of February, Kohberger's attorneys filed a motion hoping to keep Kohberger's purported Amazon activity out of the trial. In that motion, defense attorney's argued the data was incomplete and came from a shared Amazon account.
The motion also argued that Amazon's ability to manipulate the behavior of its customers called into question the relevance of information such as "click activity."
