Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. Brian
Koberger's trial is still quite a ways off, with the
preliminary hearing being scheduled for about five months from now
in June. But up until then, there's still a lot
that's going to happen as far as this case progressing
through the courts. Unfortunately, due to the gag order, we're
not going to have access to the people who are
prosecuting the case and who are defending Brian Coberger of
these charges. So what we're going to have to do
is rely on whatever we get as far as court
filings and whatever rumbles we hear from people who are
close to the case. So on today's episode, what we're
going to do is take a look at what we
might expect leading up to the trial of Brian Cohberger,
and to do that, we're going to use an article
from the Daily Evergreen, which is the student voice of
Washington State University, headline explainer what to expect in State
of Idaho versus Brian Coburger case. This article was authored
by Punit Bassanti and Sadie Photo Vansa. With Brian Coberger's
next court appearance scheduled five months from now. Experts weigh
in on the possibilities of the case and what we
can expect as this case unfolds. One thing I think
we can expect is a lot more twists and turns.
There's still a whole lot more about this that we
don't even know about, and honestly, as the public, we've
only scratched the surface of what's truly going on behind
the scenes. And that goes for both sides. Right. You
know that Brian Coberger's attorneys are hard at work, just
like the prosecution. The question is what are they going
to be able to drum up. You can only make
so much out of so little, and unless they have
something cooking on the back burner, meaning the defense, I
just don't see any way out of this for Brian Coolberger.
David Leroy, Idaho trial lawyer who specializes in criminal felony
defense cases, said the prosecution will take the time allotted
between now and the preliminary hearing to prepare witnesses and
evidence to present at the hearing in order to show
two things that there is probable cause to believe a
crime was committed and that there is probable cause to
believe that this defendant committed the crime. And we've already
seen the first salvo, obviously from the prosecution with the
probable cause Affidavid. They tipped their hand a little bit
in that Affidavid, obviously because they had to get the
judge to sign off. But there's no doubt that they
held back evidence as far as other DNA evidence they
have and the other strong evidence that they're going to
unleash later on. So the prosecution is only going to
give them just a little bit and then the real
information dump will come during discovery. Meanwhile, the defense will
be looking at the evidence provided in the arrest Affidavid,
as well as discovery provided by prosecution, which may include
police and expert opinion reports, photographs, and any other details
involving the case. He said, So what will happen is
they'll get this whole entire portfolio, if you will, of
all of the details that have been compiled by the investigators,
all of the evidence, how they compile that evidence, the
chain of custody, which officers were working on, what part
of the project, all of that, and then the defense
what they're gonna do is they're going to unleash their
own experts to go through all of that with a
fine tooth comb and look for inconsistencies or things that
might have been conducted improperly, as far as chain of
custody or other procedures that the government has to abide by.
I would expect the defense will be analyzing the details
of the police reports, taking a look at the expert
opinions and scientific laboratory reports, perhaps hiring their own experts
to analyze those for them to prepare for that hearing
and for a possible trial, Leroy said, And a lot
of that comes down to money, right, If you have
the right amount of money, you can hire as many
experts as you want. For instance, if you're trying to
get off of a rico case, meaning a racketeering case,
forget it. You're looking at millions of dollars being spent
on attorneys and experts, forensic accountants, you name it. And
when you're talking about a quadruple homicide, you're certainly talking
about a lot of different experts that are going to
have to be brought in. So I don't know where
Brian Kohberger is going to get all the money for
all of these experts, or if the state of Idaho
is going to give him a large budget where he
is able to get that via taxpayer dollars. But either way,
the defense is going to want their own specialists to
take a look at all of this information that has
been compiled and turned over as evidence. Even in simple cases,
additional time can be requested and granted to allow for
time to go over evidence. He said. It's not uncommon
to ask for a delay. It is atypical to set
the hearing out for six months, but certainly understandable in
this case with all of the complicated fact patterns and
different kinds of scientific evidence that we have, that both
the defense and prosecution would want to analyze that evidence
and prepare for cross examination. Leroy said, and I agree
with that. This is a complex case with a lot
of twists and turns, with very high stakes. We're talking
about somebody who's possibly going to be facing the death penalty,
So it's a good idea to make sure all of
the evidence is solid, make sure that everything is ironclad.
That way, when you bring it to the jury, there's
no doubt. And of course the defense they're gonna be
looking to go the opposite way, right, They're gonna be
looking at punch holes in every last thing that is
brought to the attention of the jury by the prosecution.
Once all the evidence is presented at the preliminary hearing,
the defendant will either be found by a judge who
determines there is enough probable cause, or the defendant can
waive their right to that hearing, in which case the
defendant would then appear before a district judge and enter
a plea. He said, there is a chance of another
hearing held between now and the preliminary hearing if the
defense or the prosecution has a request, but the next
significant hearing will be the one held in June. Leroy said, so, yeah,
that's the one that's going to set the table up.
Until then, everything's gonna be procedural, like he was saying here,
if there's some sort of issue, they might try and
get in front of the judge, but a lot of
this is going to be done with filings. So one
side'll have a filing, then the other side will counter
that filing with their own, and then the judge will
have to make a decision. And there's going to be
a bunch of that as we get to the point
where we're at the trial now you'll save it now.
It is also possible that both the prosecution and defense
could ask for a change of venue. If granted, this
would move the trial to a different Idaho county where
there may be less publicity about the case, which would
increase the likelihood of having an objective jury. He said,
And I don't think we're going to see that, honestly.
But however, we might see the judge pull a move
like we saw Judge Goal pull down in Delphi and
have jurors come in from a different county. Because if
you move the whole entire operation, you're talking about a
lot of money and people who might not be able
to get to these hearings. Right, the family members, people
who are affected, they have a right to show up
at this trial and look at the acus and make
sure that he's held accountable. So if you move it
out of the jurisdiction, how are people supposed to do
that with all of their other duties, work and school
and all the rest of it. So I think a
solid workaround will be to just mimic what happened down
in Delphi. When New York Times reporter Nicholas Bogel Burroughs
descended upon Layta County to cover the Moscow homicides with
fellow reporter Mike Baker. He was met with a few surprises.
Bogel Burroughs has had experience covering high profile crimes and
court cases, from the Derek Chauvin to the Kyle Rittenhouse trials.
He is familiar with approaching these cases. One thing you
learn real quick covering this kind of stuff is that
all of these places, meaning these counties, these districts, they
all have different rules. So one courthouse might have a
set of rules, and then the next courthouse has a
completely different set of rules. And that's what mister bogel
Burroughs found here. I think it's been somewhat unique, not
without president, but somewhat unique to have this very broad
gag order. He said, Yeah, Look, this gag order is
certainly something that needs to be discussed, right. It's very
broad and the scope of it is very large. So
I don't know if it's going to stand as is,
but as of now, these are the rules that everybody
has to abide by as far as people who are
working the case. The non dissemination order for the Coburger
court case prohibits law enforcement the prosecuting and defense attorneys,
as well as the attorneys for the victims and their
families from speaking to the public or the media about
the investigation. He said that while every case is different,
in his experience, he has covered high profile trials with
far less restrictive non dissemination orders. That's a fact. This
is a very very restrictive order and it's certainly infringing
on the First Amendment right of the American public. There
is no doubt about that. But the judge believes that
there is cause. So we'll have to see how it
all works out, especially now with these media organizations getting
into the fray. That's obviously done to protect the fairness
of the proceedings, but also from a media perspective, of course,
it creates a challenge in trying to learn more about
the case, bogo Burrow said. He said that reporters just
need to learn to abide by the non dissemination order
and report on what they can while following it. That's
the right way to go about it. Report on what
you can follow along with the court filings, and fill
in the blanks whenever there is some information that becomes available.
Bogo Burrow said, when Coberger's first hearing came around. He
was concerned because the seating inside the courtroom was first come,
first serve. He arrived shortly after five am and found
out that the hearing was going to be around nine
thirty am. That's how a lot of these proceedings go.
The Glenn Maxwell trial was also first come, first serve,
but they had an overflow room for her trial. I
don't know if they're going to do that here. My
guess is the media will request that, but I'm not
too sure. When he arrived in the courtroom, one of
the rules was that they can only use pen and paper.
Bogo Burrow said this rule is more common in federal
courthouses than a county court. However, he knows every place
is different. When covering high profile cases, bogo Burrows keeps
in mind the tragedy at the center of them. He said,
when you have fifty journalists in a room, I think
sometimes people can forget how intensely difficult the legal proceedings
are for the parties who were actually involved. Bogo Burrow said,
there's no doubt that we have to keep in mind
that these are real people and real lives. Were absolutely
and tragically altered forever. Imagine waking up and your brother
or your sister is no longer here. Imagine what that
would do to your life, How it would shatter your
whole entire perception of what the future is supposed to be.
So whenever we're talking about cases like this, or talking
about any situation that's affecting people's lives like this, we
have to keep in mind that these are real people.
So it's nice to hear that a national reporter from
an outlet like The New York Times it recognizes that
and keeps it in mind, because we all know how
it goes for the legacy media. If it bleeds, it leads,
and there's really nothing they won't do to get those clicks.
So it's going to be interesting to see how the
media reacts to this gag order. And it's certainly going
to be interesting to see how the national media covers
this moving forward. All right, folks, Well that's going to
do it for this one. All of the information that
goes along with this episode can be found in the
description box