Bryan Kohberger’s new lawyer has warned that everything the public believes about the murder of four University of Idaho students may not tell the ‘complete story’.
The newly recruited New York criminal defense attorney Jason Goldman made the claim as Kohberger attempts to withdraw his guilty pleas.
His legal team also wants the judge who sentenced him removed from the proceedings.
Kohberger, 31, admitted murdering Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin under a deal that took the death penalty off the table.
The four students were stabbed to death in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.
Kohberger, then a criminology PhD student at nearby Washington State University, was arrested at his family’s home in Pennsylvania six weeks later.
Having avoided execution, Kohberger was instead sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole.
But the former criminology student is now seeking post-conviction relief, claiming that his pleas were affected by threats and promises made by his own lawyers that were not kept, stating that he was ‘convinced to falsely confess’.
Goldman, who recently joined Kohberger’s legal team, told PEOPLE magazine he would ‘simply caution against assuming that everything the public believes it knows about this case tells the complete story’.
He added that ‘there remain serious questions about how this case reached its present posture and a hearing will provide an appropriate forum to address those issues’.
Kohberger made his allegations in a handwritten petition filed ahead of proceedings scheduled for June 2027. He claimed he received ‘ineffective assistance of counsel’ before agreeing to plead guilty.
The now-convicted murderer also argued that his plea was not entered ‘knowingly or voluntarily because it was induced by unkept promises’. He claimed it was additionally the result of ‘threats asserted by his legal counsel’.
His petition, however, doesn’t actually establish that any threats or ‘unkept promises’ were made. Those allegations currently remain unproven and will have to be tested through the necessary court processes.
Kohberger’s lawyers are also seeking to disqualify Judge Steven Hippler from overseeing that process.
Hippler accepted the guilty pleas before imposing the four life sentences back in July 2025.
New attorney Goldman said: ‘This is not about attacking the Court nor asking for special treatment.
‘It is about ensuring that the serious constitutional questions now before the Court are heard in a forum whose impartiality and neutrality cannot be questioned.’
Goldman believes the judge would effectively be asked to examine the fairness of proceedings over which he previously presided. Which could be considered as intrinsically unfair to his client.
‘It would be an inherent conflict for the same presiding judge to decide these very issues,’ he went on.
Judge Hippler has nonetheless granted Kohberger both a status conference and an evidentiary hearing over his attempt to retract the pleas.
The hearing will provide his legal team with an opportunity to produce evidence supporting the claims made in his petition.
Prosecutors are fighting the bid and have asked Hippler to dismiss Kohberger’s request for post-conviction relief.
Kohberger was sentenced at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise on July 23, 2025. Alongside four lifetimes in prison, he received another 10 years for burglary and was ordered to pay $270,000 in fines and civil penalties.
That hearing took place three weeks after Kohberger appeared in the same courtroom and admitted killing the four students.
The plea agreement also included Kohberger giving up his right to appeal. Seeking post-conviction relief is therefore his remaining route to undoing the pleas and obtaining a new trial.
Goldman hasn’t publicly explained what he believes the accepted account of the case may be missing.
For now, his warning leaves that question hanging over Kohberger’s attempt to reopen a case that appeared to have reached its conclusion.