A judge says that a former roommate of four students from the Idaho University who were killed in 2022 can testify about seeing An intruder with “bushy eyebrows” Around the time of crime.
Defensor lawyers of Bryan Kherberger Asked the 4th district judge Steven Hippler Duration a hearing earlier this month to prohibit any evidence that refers to “bushy eyebrows”, because, for example, the description of the frame is not reliable and irrelevant to the case.
But in a ruling published on Friday, Hipler said that the testimony can be used Kherberger’s trial on four murder positions that will begin at the end of this year.
Kherberger, 30, is accused of murder in the Stabbed deaths Or Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison May and Kaylee Goncalves in a rental house near the campus in Moscow, Idaho.
Kherberger, then a graduate student of Criminal Justice at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks after deaths. The researchers said they coincided with their DNA with the genetic material recovered from a knife pod found in the crime scene.
When asked to enter a statement of the charges, Kherberger remained silent, which led the judge to present a declaration of non -guilty in his.
The roommate told the police that he saw someone with black clothes and a ski mask inside the house he shared with four roommates at some point before 4:19 am on the day of the murders, according to judicial documents.
She was intoxicated at that time and told the Police that she could not remember any other facial feature, but that the thickened eyebrows of the intruder stood out in her memory.
Kherberger’s defense lawyers noticed that the fourth partner also constantly questioned what he saw, that his attention was influenced by drowsiness and alcohol, and that his opportunity to see the intruder was second at most.
Allowing him to testify about Bush’s eyebrows when he could provide enough details to allow a police artist to make a compound sketch would be unfair and harmful, which makes a jury believe that Kherberger is guilty of Balrowseys.
But the judge does not agree.
“There is a great abyss between a finding that a witness is not competent to testify about what he witnessed personally, and simply allowing the political trial for a vigorous interrogation,” Hipler wrote. “This is an interrogation issue.”
Hippler also said that if Kherberger is convicted, his defense team cannot use his medical diagnoses to explain his “court behavior” unless Kherberger takes the duration of the position in the penalty phase.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to prohibit any duration of the testimony of the phase phase on Kherberger’s autistic spectrum disorder, the compulsive obsessive disorder and the development coordination disorder that Kherberger could have experienced.
The prosecutor’s team said they did not want mental conditions to be used to try to limit Kherberger’s guilt if it is convicted.
But the defense team said they did not plan to do that at all, and that instead their diagnosis of autistic spectrum would be used to explain part of the behavior of the Kohberger court, as their tendency to maintain visual contact for a longer time than expected, its ability to stay very still and its stoicism.
The judge said he had noticed any strange behavior.
“Not once, the court has perceived the defendant who acts in a strange or incongruous way or demonstrating signs in the law of lawyers that would guarantee any explanation to the jury. His behavior has been completely appropriate,” he writes Hippler.
The introduction of evidence about the diagnosis of the autistic spectrum wishes to confuse the jury and take an improper amount of time in a long trial, he said.
Even so, said the judge, Kherberger’s behavior could become relevant if he takes the position to testify. Kherberger’s diagnosis could also be relevant at some point, said Hippler, partly since the defense team has said that Kherberger experiences difficulty sleeping that led to the custom of night driving and running to decompress.
If Soose scenarios arise, the judge said that lawyers should be the matter for him, outside the presence of the jury, so that he can make a decision on whether the evidence must be introduced at that time.