Why the Bryan Kohberger Plea Makes Sense

Not everyone was pleased, but the complexities of death penalty cases and the true crime conspiratorial world seen in the Karen Read case are two of many factors

By Brett Talley and Alice LaCour

On Monday night, news broke that Bryan Kohberger, the accused murderer of four college students, would plead guilty. In exchange for sparing him the death penalty, Kohberger will agree to spend the rest of his life in prison. It was a swift end to a story that has fascinated and terrified the true crime community since reports began to leak out on November 13, 2022, of the horrific scene on the campus of the University of Idaho.

Not everyone was pleased. The family of Kaylee Goncalves released a statement expressing their disappointment, saying, “We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho. They have failed us.” Family members of other victims followed, sharing their frustration and sadness. Shortly thereafter, people started asking us questions, two in particular. Why would the state do this? And did this have anything to do with the outcome in the Karen Read case?

In fairness to the state of Idaho, this was not an unexpected outcome. Anne Taylor, Kohberger’s defense attorney, tried everything in her power to win this case for him on procedural grounds, from challenging the grand jury system to seeking to exclude all the evidence in the case. But what she never seemed to do was seek the spotlight in the way other defense attorneys have done in recent cases. Despite having a blockbuster case dropped in her lap, Taylor seemed more interested in reaching the best conclusion for her client than being at the center of the next true crime documentary on Netflix. With her options exhausted and trial looming, saving Kohberger’s life was the best she could do.

Bryan Kohberger in court, approaching his attorney, Anne Taylor.

The state had a strong interest in settling as well. Yes, for those of us who support the death penalty, the only true justice in a brutal, premeditated murder such as this one is for the perpetrator to forfeit their life. But justice is a human affair, and often imperfect. A death penalty case is hard, never mind one with four victims.

That difficulty starts with jury selection, when the jury must be “death proofed.” They must be open to imposing the death penalty if appropriate, but also open minded enough to spare the killer if the state fails to meet the added burden of showing death is appropriate. And that’s just the beginning. The state and the defense must not only prepare to try the case, they must be ready for the mini-trial that follows, when the same jury that decided guilt decides the sentence, too.

Of course, you only get there if the jury convicts. All it takes is one juror who doesn’t understand the highly technical evidence in this case, or who buys crackpot conspiracies, or thinks beyond reasonable doubt is the equivalent of being there, and suddenly the case hangs—or, if they are persuasive enough, the killer walks. And a conviction doesn’t guarantee death. If one of those jurors decides that they can’t pass that kind of judgment on someone, or that no one should ever be killed by the state, or that the state just didn’t meet the burden, you’re back to life in prison.

Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogan and Kaylee Gonclaves. Kohberger plans to plead guilty to their 2022 murders in their home off-campus beside the University of Idaho.

But let’s say you get the conviction. And you get the death penalty. That is far from the end. What follows is decades of appeals, habeas petitions, innocence campaigns, and clemency appeals. If the trial is overturned on a technicality, the process starts all over again. Given all these considerations, the alternative—a guilty plea, an agreed life in prison sentence, and no appeals—is pretty attractive.

And then, of course, there’s the new reality we live in. We cannot know whether the Karen Read verdict affected the prosecution’s thinking in Idaho, and in all likelihood, it didn’t. But that’s not to say it shouldn’t have. In many ways, the Kohberger case had the makings of the next true crime debacle. A faction of Kohbros had already staked out positions on social media. Kohberger was innocent, they claimed. He was a vegan, and vegans wouldn’t commit this kind of crime. He was too thoughtful, the DNA too insignificant, the cell phone date too unreliable. He took a selfie right after the murders, for goodness sakes! And what about the survivors? The food truck operator? The Uber driver? All so suspicious. Would they really act the way they did if they had no culpability? Would the killer really leave them alive? Maybe internet sleuths should work together to find the real truth, the truth the police didn’t want to find.

Aidan Kearney, the infamous blogger Turtleboy from the Karen Read trial, summed it up best in a tweet following the announcement, in which he lamented that Kohberger was to have been his first trial after Read, and now it wouldn’t happen.

The decision whether to offer a deal or to press forward with trial is one of the most difficult a prosecutor faces, especially when the evidence is strong. And no one wants to make decisions based on press coverage or the attention a case has generated. And yet, in the world we live in now, the danger of rabid online sleuths turning into a killer’s best friends has become another factor prosecutors must consider. Life in prison isn’t a perfect outcome, but it’s far better than hearing those two words ring through a courtroom—not guilty.

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Brett Talley and Alice LaCour are co-hosts of the Prosecutors and the Prosecutors: Legal Briefs podcasts.