An Idaho judge ruled on Thursday that Bryan Kohberger’s autism spectrum disorder (ASD) does not warrant striking the death penalty as a potential consequence if he is convicted of murdering four University of Idaho students.
The 30-year-old is accused of killing Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, who were found stabbed to death in an off-campus rental residence in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.
Oral argument on the motion was held April 9. The Court then took the matter under advisement until Thursday.
Prosecutors said they intend to seek the death penalty if Kohberger is convicted at his trial, which is set to begin in August, while Kohberger’s defense team argued that the death penalty would violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
The defense asked Hippler to remove the death penalty as a possible punishment, citing two states, Ohio and Kentucky, that recently enacted legislation barring people with serious mental illness from being sentenced to death.
Hippler acknowledged that there is growing societal sensitivity to mental disorders generally, and said that evidence of evolving standards of decency must come from legislative and executive actions.
“Two states protecting individuals with severe mental illness from execution is not a national consensus,” Hippler wrote in his order. “Further, these two state statutes only apply to schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and delusional disorder, not ASD.”
In addition to lethal injection, Idaho allows firing squads for executions.
House Bill 37 was signed by Idaho Gov. Brad Little on March 12 and made firing squad the main method of execution starting July 1, 2026.
Kohberger’s defense team also cited Atkins v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that those with intellectual disabilities cannot be executed for a crime.
“While intellectually disabled and ASD individuals may share some of the same adaptive impairments, the intellectual deficit—an essential feature of an intellectual disability—is not a diagnostic element of ASD,” Hippler said in the order.
Kohberger was a Ph.D. criminology student at Washington State University’s Pullman campus when he was arrested at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania in December 2022 after investigators linked Kohberger to the alleged murders through DNA testing.
