Bryan Kohberger asks to withdraw his guilty plea in the University of
Idaho murders case
[July 28, 2026]
By REBECCA BOONE
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The man convicted of murdering four University of
Idaho students is asking a court to let him withdraw his guilty plea and
go to trial, saying his attorneys manipulated him into making the deal
by promising him better prison conditions and scaring him about the
quality of life on death row.
Bryan Kohberger, 31, filed the hand-written petition on Monday from the
Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary where he is serving four consecutive
life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana
Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near campus in 2022. It's
been just over one year since he pleaded guilty to the stabbing deaths
that scarred the close-knit community of Moscow, Idaho.
In his request, Kohberger said his attorneys didn't adequately represent
him and that his guilty plea wasn't knowingly or voluntarily entered
because it “was induced by unkept promises” and threats.
He offered only a few details in elaboration, saying they failed to
disclose or review evidence that might have helped his case during plea
discussions, like an “unknown hair in Chapin's hand.”
He also wrote that the attorneys insisted that his plea “need not be
truthful, despite petitioner's vehement denial of actual guilt,” that
they promised life in prison would come with “immediate contact visits,
freedom of movement, employment” and that they told him “elaborate lies
of DR (death row) life.”
That’s the opposite of what Kohberger told 4th District Judge Steven
Hippler on July 2, 2025, when he confirmed that he was pleading guilty
“freely and voluntarily” because he was, in fact, guilty, and not
because he had some other incentive. As part of that process, he had to
agree to waive his rights to appeal, confirm that he understood the
punishments on the table for the crimes and assure the court that he
wasn’t coerced by his attorneys or anyone else to make the plea.
Those and other questions were posed to Kohberger more than once — first
in a nine-page legal document that Kohberger filled out, initialed and
signed, and later in direct questioning by the judge — all in an effort
to ensure that his plea would hold up.
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In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed they would not seek the
death penalty, and instead would recommend that he be sentenced to
four back-to-back life sentences without the possibility of parole,
plus an additional 10 years.
“Have any other promises been made to you that have influenced your
decision to plead guilty?” Kohberger was asked on the plea agreement
document. He checked the the box indicating “no.”
“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” Hippler asked him
in court a few days later.
“Yes,” Kohberger replied.
Once a defendant has been sentenced, Idaho law requires them to show
that they experienced “manifest injustice” in order to withdraw a
guilty plea. That is a tough legal standard, but it can be met if a
defendant convinces a judge that they made the plea involuntarily or
that other serious constitutional errors were made in the case.
For Kohberger’s team of four court-appointed attorneys, the plea
deal was a way to save his life. Over two years of hearings, they
tried multiple times to get capital punishment off the table. They
challenged the legitimacy of DNA evidence, argued that Kohberger’s
autism diagnosis made him less culpable, suggested there might be
another unknown suspect to be found, and said the death penalty
violates international standards of decency.
But none of the arguments worked, and Kohberger's trial was just a
month away when he reached the plea agreement.
The lead defense attorney on the case, Anne Taylor, is one of the
most highly regarded capital defenders in the state, with nearly
three decades of experience, more than half of it as a
death-penalty-qualified defender. A person who answered the phone at
her office on Monday immediately said “no comment” and hung up
before she could be asked if it was Kohberger's case or another
matter on which she was declining to comment.
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