Bryan Kohberger could evade the death penalty over evidence leaked on Dateline
Idaho quadruple murder suspect Bryan Kohberger might avoid the death penalty if convicted because of leaked evidence, a former prosecutor suggested.Kohberger is accused of killing Madison Mogen, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20.On May 9, a television episode featured leaked information relating to the case, which Kohberger’s attorney has argued will taint the jury pool.Included in NBC’s “Dateline” special on the University of Idaho murders was surveillance video from a neighboring house, which caught a car similar to Kohberger’s driving in the King Road area several times in the hours and minutes before the four college students were killed.The episode also featured alleged evidence from a nearby FBI cellphone tower, which claimed to show that Kohberger’s phone pinged nearly a dozen times near a tower providing coverage to an area within 100 feet of 1122 King Road, where the students were killed.
The phone allegedly pinged near the tower on multiple occasions between July 2022 and mid-August 2022.Former Assistant U.S.Attorney Neama Rahmani told Fox News Digital that the leak has the potential to remove the death penalty as a punishment.“The media leak could help Bryan Kohberger on appeal or potentially take the death penalty off the table.
If the leak results in prejudicial pretrial publicity that taints the jury pool, especially if the leak was of inadmissible evidence, that’s a constitutional violation,” Rahmani said.Rahmani brought up the Lori Vallow Daybell case, where the judge ruled that prosecutors couldn’t seek the death penalty after they didn’t comply with discovery rules.Vallow Daybell was found guilty after prosecutors alleged that she worked with Alex Cox, her brother, to murder her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, to receive money from a $1 million life insurance policy.“The other basis for appeal or to strike the death penalty would be prosecutorial misconduct or a violation of a judicial ...