Families confront Bryan Kohberger at sentencing
Loved ones deliver raw, powerful impact statements at Bryan Kohberger’s sentencing.
Bryan Kohberger, the man convicted of the murders of four Idaho college students in 2022, has filed a petition seeking to challenge his guilty plea and conviction, court records show.
Kohberger, 31, filed a “petition for post-conviction relief” on July 27 in the Ada County District Court in Idaho. Such petitions allow defendants to challenge convictions after sentencing on grounds including ineffective assistance of counsel and other alleged legal or constitutional errors. Court records indicate that Kohberger is representing himself.
Kohberger first publicly disclosed the petition in an interview with The New York Times, where he claimed he was innocent and had been misled into confessing to the high-profile killings. He declined to discuss evidence supporting his claim of innocence or elaborate on his concerns about the plea process, according to the Times.
“Circumnavigated by a broken plea, the trial never provided the public the clarity conducive to closure, and justice shall remain abjectly miscarried unless that plea is withdrawn. … My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” he said in a statement to the newspaper on July 26.
Last year, Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. He was later sentenced to four life sentences without the possibility of parole and a 10-year sentence for burglary.
What happened in the 2022 Idaho killings?
Prosecutors said Kohberger broke into the victims’ rental home near the University of Idaho campus and stabbed the four students to death on Nov. 13, 2022. The murders rocked the town of Moscow, setting the community on edge as investigators searched for weeks for a suspect before authorities arrested Kohberger on Dec. 30, 2022, in Pennsylvania, where his family lives.
Kohberger was linked to the crimes using DNA evidence found on a knife sheath near one of the victims’ bodies, along with cell phone data and surveillance footage of his car’s movements, according to prosecutors.
At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a doctoral student in criminal justice at nearby Washington State University. Police records reviewed by USA TODAY last year detailed a history of complaints about Kohberger’s behavior at the university, including allegations that he intimidated classmates and made female students feel “unsafe.”
Kohberger struck a plea deal in July 2025 that divided the victims’ families as it allowed him to avoid the death penalty and a highly publicized trial. The plea deal was announced just weeks before his murder trial was set to begin in August 2025.
Though Kohberger admitted responsibility for the killings during his plea hearing, he never publicly explained a motive. In his statement to the Times, he called investigators’ account of the killings a “myopic narrative” and a “work of fiction,” arguing that its “faulty premises were never challenged at trial.”
Idaho victim’s family criticizes Kohberger’s innocence claims
In response to Kohberger’s filing, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said his office “stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out.”
“My heart goes out to the families of Madison, Kaylee, Xana, and Ethan, who have already endured unimaginable loss and now must face today’s deeply painful news,” Labrador said in a statement on X.
The Goncalves family also criticized the Times for giving Kohberger a platform to share his claims of innocence. In a statement on July 27, the family described Kohberger as a “mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.”
“The story didn’t have much else in it, other than a guilty man claiming he is innocent once again,” the Goncalves family said in the statement. “Nothing in the story or in Kohberger’s statement does he allude to the fact [that] he did not ‘knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently’ admit to murdering the 4 victims of this tragedy.”
The family said Kohberger chose not to leave his fate to a jury and avoided a potential death sentence by pleading guilty. They added that they were prepared for any additional court proceedings and remained confident in the evidence against Kohberger.
“The Defendant will get another day in court,” the Goncalves family said. “A nice break from his solitary confinement, getting to go for a ride, maybe some different food, photos taken and the attention all back on him and his ‘innocence’.”
Contributing: Christopher Cann, Jeanine Santucci and N’dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
