The Idaho Supreme Court has denied an appeal request from attorneys representing the 29-year-old man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in 2022.
Defense attorneys appealed to the state’s Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision not to dismiss the case. The Latah County District Court previously denied the defense’s motion to dismiss.
Defense attorneys filed the appeal on February 8, which was denied on Tuesday, KTVB reported. While the appeal to potentially dismiss the case was rejected, the Idaho Supreme Court did grant the suspect’s request to seal the appeal documents.
The defense has argued that the grand jury that indicted the suspect, who is not being named per Daily Wire policy, was biased and given inaccurate instructions. Defense attorneys also say that the grand jury reached its decision based on inadmissible evidence and insufficient evidence to indict. The attorneys also allege prosecutorial misconduct.
The suspect has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of burglary relating to the killings of Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21, in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, in the college town of Moscow, Idaho.
Part of the evidence that led to the suspect’s arrest, mentioned in a previously unsealed probable cause affidavit, showed that police were able to narrow the timeframe of the crime to between 4:00 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. and reviewed video footage taken in the area in the time before and after the murders are believed to have occurred. Video showed a white Hyundai Elantra without a front license plate (front license plates are required in Washington and Idaho, but not in Pennsylvania, where the car was registered) in the area between 3:29 a.m. and 4:20 a.m.
The vehicle can be seen passing the off-campus residence three times before returning a fourth time around 4:04 a.m. and attempting to turn around on the road. The vehicle was next seen around 4:20 a.m. traveling away from the direction of the off-campus residence at high speed, heading in the direction of a road that eventually leads to Pullman, Washington, where the suspect attended Washington State University (WSU).
Video footage from the WSU campus showed a white Hyundai Elantra leaving the area and heading toward Moscow at around 2:53 a.m. At around 5:25 a.m., this vehicle was again observed on five cameras in Pullman and the WSU campus.
Police pulled records for white Hyundai Elantras registered at WSU on November 29 – just over two weeks after the murders were committed – and found one belonging to the man who was eventually arrested. Police reviewed the owner’s Washington state driver’s license and determined he matched the suspect’s physical description provided by one of the surviving roommates.
Police matched the suspect to the vehicle through two previous traffic stops in the months before the murders. They also learned that the suspect registered his car in Washington and received Washington plates on November 18 – five days after the murders.
In a previous filing, the suspect’s attorneys claimed that DNA found at the crime scene may have been planted by police.
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“The State’s argument asks this Court and [the suspect] to assume – is that the DNA on the sheath was placed there by [the suspect], and not someone else during an investigation that spans hundreds of members of law enforcement and apparently at least one lab the State refuses to name,” the suspect’s defense attorneys wrote.
A trial date still has not been set for the case.
