OPINION: Media won’t cause Kohberger’s change of venue

Brian Kohberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in late 2022, may get his trial transferred out of Latah County as his defense team wants.

But prejudicial media coverage won’t be the reason.

Kohberger’s lawyers argued in an Aug. 29 change of venue hearing that the people of Latah County are so biased against their client that he cannot get a fair trial. A poll conducted on Kohberger’s behalf alleges that two-thirds of the people in Latah County consider him guilty while the population of Ada County has less of a direct connection to the case and therefore can provide a more impartial jury pool.

Their culprit — biased news accounts of the case.

However, an analysis of media coverage — performed by Todd Murphy, president of Truescope for the defense — cuts both ways. There’s been a lot of coverage. On the other hand, as Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson noted, the volume of media traffic in Ada County outpaced that of Latah County in the months following Kohberger’s arrest through mid-June 2023.

For instance:

In March 2023, the ratio of coverage between Ada and Latah counties was about 8 to 1.

In May 2023, consumers of Ada County news had nearly three times more volume than those in Latah County.

By the end of the year, the volume in Latah County outpaced that of Ada County by about 2 to 1.

In April, the same ratio of local to Ada County coverage occurred.

Consider, also, the complexion of this news. It was generated by nuts-and-bolts events inside the courthouse and out.

Coverage spiked when details about a search warrant emerged in the spring of 2023 or when a grand jury issued an indictment in May of that year.

The same pattern repeated itself as developments about the status of a death penalty, an alibi defense or a change of venue hearing emerged.

And where the Latah County coverage greatly exceeded its counterpart in Ada County, it reflected local events — the one-year observance of the slayings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin or the demolition of the off-campus house where they died.

When the case went dormant, as it did in the first quarter of this year and then again this summer before the change of venue hearing, so did the number of news stories filed.

That was by design. Since the case began, Latah County District Court Judge John Judge has imposed a strict gag order on virtually everyone involved in the case — and by and large, the media has respected those guardrails. You have seen nothing of the kind of sensationalized coverage that was associated with the murder trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard more than a half-century ago, a setting the U.S. Supreme Court later characterized as a “carnival atmosphere” and has chastened news coverage of criminal trials ever since.

Inflammatory reports about questionable evidence or even the opinions of investigators have been noticeably absent from the conventional Kohberger coverage.

That said, Kohberger’s case may wind up in Boise for many of the same reasons that the murder trials of Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were transferred from rural eastern Idaho, where the crimes occurred.

If Kohberger’s defense is correct about the attitudes of Latah County residents — regardless of the news media’s role — then it could take weeks to assemble an impartial jury in a smaller community, if at all. That’s time the court system can’t allocate to other cases.

This trial will require infrastructure — security, resources to lodge the teams of lawyers, witnesses and the public as well as media links — that may not be available in Latah County.

And in considering what Judge called “professionally the most difficult decision I ever had to make,” one fact is beyond dispute: Granting the defense motion for a change of venue takes one more issue for appeal off the table.

As that proceeds, the news media will be a spectator, not a perpetrator. — M.T.