in exchange for death penalty being dropped

https://www.eastidahonews.com/2025/06/reports-bryan-kohberger-to-accept-plea-agreement-victims-family-beyond-furious/

"Bryan Kohberger, the suspect in the highly anticipated murder trial accused of killing four Idaho college students, accepted a plea deal.

The plea deal offered to take the death penalty off the table, in exchange for Kohberger pleading guilty to the four first-degree murder charges and an additional charge of felony burglary. He’s expected to appear in court at 11 a.m. July 2 for a change of plea hearing, according to the letter, which was provided to one of the victims’ family.

If Kohberger pleads guilty “as expected,” he’ll likely be sentenced in late July to life in prison, according to the letter. If he doesn’t, the trial will proceed as planned. As a part of the plea deal, Kohberger will also have to waive his right to an appeal"

Some victims families are not thrilled

"“We are beyond furious at the state of Idaho. They have failed us,” the Goncalves family posted on its Facebook page. “Please give us some time. This was very unexpected. We appreciate all your love and support.” Steve Goncalves and Stacey Chapin each could not be reached for comment."

Every time I hear about this horrible crime, I feel sadness. University of Idaho is where I attended my first year of college, got engaged, had room mates who didn't know anything about about the mormon church and went to my first concert to see a famous band (The Association). It has been traumatic to realize what took place in a town that held only happy times for me back then.

From living in Idaho, I get the feeling that some (like me) are embarrassed Idaho is constantly in the news for bat crazy things.

I suspect there is pressure to get this guilty plea to work so that there won't be weeks of a trial with even more bad PR about Idaho.

I agree with you! I really loved being born and raised in Idaho, picking spuds for $3/sack in the late 50's and graduating from high school in 1967 with my wonderful class of 84 students. My Idaho roots run very deep and it pains me to hear about some of the worst things that have happened there.

Ilived all around the country. Every part of it has some crazy. New York was nuts in the 80’s. It’s a different kind of nuts now. Lived in Boise in the 90’s and loved it.

The world is far from perfect.

I was living in NYC in the '80s. The only two things that I recall that were significant were the AIDS crisis (I was working in a heavily-gay industry, and it hit us hard,) and the "greed is good" era on Wall St. which has strangely returned. I do remember the "Black Monday" stock market crash of 1987. But there was not much going on apart from those things. The cost of housing along with the cost of well, everything was already zooming upwards.

The city loved, loved, loved JFK Jr. and followed his comings and goings avidly. If he went out to breakfast then by noon the entire city knew where he ate and what he had to eat. His girlfriend, later wife, Carolyn had a good reputation in the fashion industry -- she was working for Calvin Klein who was all the thing back then. Ivanna Trump was actually well thought of as a businesswoman, much more so than her later replacements.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2025 01:00PM by summer.

If only they still had bunny bashes, Kohberger could have taken out his frustration on rabbits instead.

That's disgusting.

I think the anger with some of the parents will slowly calm down. The reason he pleaded guilty is because the authorities in Idaho did a great job of nailing this guy. We could debate the death penalty vs life in prison but the bottom line is this POS is out of society.

+1

I wonder if the victim filies were consulted...

Also, I'm sure he won't have even 1 happy day in prison...

I think life without parole would be a fair sentence.

Pleading down to life without parole is pretty common, and usually there is something in it for the state, at the very least, a guaranteed conviction. There may also be something in it for the victims.

That was Mark Hofmann's plea. It save the LDS Church the embarrassment of a trial with GBH on the stand. I can see it now.
"Please state your name and occupation for the record."
"Gordon Bitner Hinckley, prophet, seer and revelator."

Four of five years ago there was a murder of an escort by a Black customer. It was a grisly murder, with the body dismembered and burned in the guy's back yard. This was not far from downtown SLC, and I have no idea how he thought he would not get caught, but that's another issue.

She was a good little Mormon girl working her way through school at the U of U as an escort. I remember thinking at the time that there was zero chance this case would go to trial because it would be too traumatic for the family. He pleaded guilty in exchange for life without parole.


In this case, there is always the chance that in a trial, he might not be convicted. For instance, his defense could claim that the evidence was improperly collected and was therefore inadmissible. Unexpected stuff happens in a trial.

Beside that, the trial would have been sensationalistic. Then there would be an endless round of appeals, dragging the events back into the news over and over. The parents were probably in their late 50s more or less at the time of the murders. If Kohberger were sentenced to death, the parents would likely die of old age before the execution were actually carried out, probably 30 years later, if it ever got carried out.

A guilty plea avoids almost all that. There could still be an appeal or two, but the prosecution can generally properly get all the t's crossed and i's dotted in a plea deal.

Hopefully the families will calm down. I think this is a far better outcome than a trial.

As part of the deal, Kohberger would surrender his right to appeal. That should be a boon to the families over the longer term; it would also save the court and the state an immense amount of money.

The one thing that the bargain would not provide is Kohberger's explanation of why he committed the crimes.

Great posts, BoJ and LW.

Re. his reasons, I hope he’s not gonna be able to profit from book writing or interviews. Something tells me that we’re gonna be seeing this guy on Netflix.

I'm not a fan of the death penalty in most cases, but it's proven to be very useful when used as a bargaining chip.

true, dat, summer; I feel the same way.

BK will rot in the hellish life he chose for hisself.

More than once, I've heard conversations from victim family members in TV interviews that if anyone deserved the death penalty, Kohberger did.

I hate to say it, but I kind of think a lot of people in Idaho would favor using it. Idaho recently got a law passed making the firing squad our primary method of execution. Idaho is the only state to have this as a primary method.

Not too long ago, Idaho botched a lethal injection execution (Thomas Creech) because they couldn't find a vein(!). It was a giant embarrassing fiasco, and the execution plans were called off. So now we have the firing squad, because it's easier to just shoot things than finding a vein apparently.

One reason I'm glad of the guilty plea is because I can imagine Idaho making a mess and screwing up another execution attempt.
I know that sounds bizarre, but competence is in short supply sometimes.