(NewsNation) — Bryan Kohberger’s defense attorneys can resume phone surveys of potential jurors in the 29-year-old’s murder trial, the judge on the case ruled.
Kohberger is charged in the 2022 stabbing deaths of Idaho college students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
The case rocked the small town of Moscow, Idaho, and Kohberger’s attorneys now say the potential jury pool will be too biased to provide Kohberger a fair trial.
In an attempt to challenge the trial’s location, Kohberger’s team hired a jury consultant to question locals and gauge how much they knew about the case. The consultant had issued the phone survey to about 400 Latah County residents by the time prosecutors objected to the practice earlier this month.
The questions and the details they communicated were a violation of a gag order in the case, prosecutors said.
Legal analyst Misty Marris clarified that it’s not uncommon for attorneys to send out surveys like the one in Kohberger’s case.
Even if the potential jury pool read about the case in the news, it doesn’t guarantee a change of venue, Marris added.
“In high-profile cases, there’s always going to be people in the jury pool who have heard of the case,” she said. “The fact that something is high profile alone does not lead to a change of venue. It’s up to the judge’s discretion whether or not there’s so much bias in a small community that another county will be tapped in to hold this trial.”
Marris said attorneys may instead follow a more stringent jury selection process to ensure that even those familiar with the case can remain impartial.
As the case unfolds, the public is learning new details about Kohberger’s defense.
He submitted a new alibi last week, claiming he was taking a night drive to see “the moon and the stars” the night of the stabbings.
“The prosecution has said that Kohberger’s cellphone pings put him in the location of the house,” Marris said. “We knew the defense was going to try to bring in an expert to try to contest that. What we didn’t know is that the defense is going to try and say that he was miles and miles away using their own forensic expert.”