Bryan Kohberger's New Attorney Overturned a Murder Conviction on a Detail Nobody Noticed - Will She Do Something Similar for Him?
The man accused of murdering four college students in a case that has rocked a small Idaho town and stunned the nation has just been assigned a hotshot public attorney, who once famously got a murder charge against her client overturned.
Bryan Kohberger, who was arrested late last month in the brutal slayings that had remained an utter mystery to the public since they occurred on Nov. 13, will be represented by Kootenai, Idaho, chief public defender, Anne Taylor.
Investigators from Taylor’s office visited the house where the murders took place on Jan. 3 according to Fox News, and according to the British tabloid U.K. Daily Mail, she has initiated a crime scene recreation, which is unusual for public defenders.
Kohberger stands accused of breaking into the home where three of the college students lived and stabbing them and a visiting boyfriend to death. He was arrested in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30 and waived an extradition hearing to expedite the process of being returned to Idaho to face charges.
He is facing the death penalty over the crimes, a motive for which has yet to be established as far as investigators have revealed.
Taylor, meanwhile, once famously saw a murder charge against one of her clients overturned when she managed to prove that a police officer had given a false testimony from the stand.
The Mail reported that Taylor worked on the case of one Jonathan Ellington, who was accused of running over a woman with his car in a road rage incident.
She was instrumental in successfully arguing that police officer Fred Rice lied on the stand when he provided testimony that Taylor described as being “pivotal in the verdict.”
Ellington would go on to be convicted of murder during a second trial after the initial charges were overturned.
However, this in no way means that Taylor couldn’t have successfully gotten him off the hook if for whatever reason the second trial had not secured another conviction.
She’s already reportedly hard at work examining the case and looking for anything that might get Kohberger exonerated for what is an already far from ironclad case against him.
The murders of the University of Idaho students were one of the worst crimes in the state’s history and were made all the more compelling to the public by the fact that there initially appeared to be no hint as to who could have committed them and why.
Authorities said they began to suspect Kohberger after discovering DNA on a knife sheath that had been left at the scene. A vehicle like his was also spotted in the area at the time. Yet he has no known connections to the college students.
Cell phone pings placed him in the area in the time leading up to the murder and a few hours after authorities believe it was committed, and the previously unknown testimony of the students’ roommate provided a description of a masked perpetrator that could easily match Kohberger’s description — but any good attorney would likely argue that it also could have been anyone.
In other words, it is not unreasonable to assume that any good public defender could establish ample reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
High-profile cases like this one make it easy for us to assume that the authorities have their man, and the evidence against him is far from unconvincing.
Yet despite our shock and horror at the bloody, inexplicable murder of four young, innocent people, we must remember that in our justice system, men like Kohberger are entitled to reasonable doubt, and women like Taylor sign up to protect these rights.
Yes, we live in a country where cold-blooded murderers could easily get off on a technicality or lack of evidence, but this is because of a justice system that works to ensure that innocent men do not spend the rest of their lives in prison or go to the proverbial gallows for something they didn’t do.
I love my country and am proud of its justice system.
Yet the fact that it will never be perfect is just a stark reminder to look to the only source of true, perfect justice: God.
Even the best justice system in the world, perhaps in the history of mankind, cannot truly rectify what is wrong with this world.
Never forget that the Gospel includes not only the hope and promise of our redemption from our own sin, but the haven this provides all wrongdoers from the coming justice of God that will truly right every wrong that has ever been committed — even the horrific, cold-blooded murders that shock us to our core and leave us with more questions than answers.
As we pray for the families of the victims in this crime, let’s also pray for those involved with carrying out justice and defending the constitution, that the system will work as it was intended to and that truth and righteousness will ultimately prevail.
Yet even if they do not, we know that they will throughout eternity, and we can always praise God for that.
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