BOISE, Idaho — What if Bryan Kohberger, the man charged with the University of Idaho student stabbings, helped lead police right to him?
His own attorneys may raise the question — including at trial — in their efforts to defend him. Kohberger is accused of killing four U of I students in November 2022 in a case that continues to collect national intrigue.
By the end, it could create new case law for criminal investigations across the U.S., legal scholars told the Idaho Statesman.
Anne Taylor, Kohberger’s lead public defender, said she has repeatedly pored over law enforcement’s evidence summary to justify his arrest and still wants to know what led police to her client as the suspect.
“The clear picture that I’m concerned about is the state’s pathway of how Bryan Kohberger comes to their attention and is identified,” Taylor told the court at a hearing last month. “Over a year into this case and … we’re not sure. I know different pieces, but I don’t know where they fit together.”
Depending on the circumstances that come to light, it could be grounds for a constitutional rights challenge over the methods police used to find and charge Kohberger, his defense attorneys have said.
In a probable cause affidavit, police described using traditional investigative techniques to arrive at Kohberger as the suspected killer and close an almost seven-week manhunt that confoundingly ended on the other side of the country in eastern Pennsylvania. DNA evidence also factored for police to allege they had their suspect, but only after the other elements established through surveillance footage of the suspect’s car and Kohberger’s cellphone location data fell into place, according to the affidavit.
But six months after Kohberger’s December 2022 arrest, state prosecutors acknowledged for the first time that an advanced DNA technique known as investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG, initially led…
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