By Kevin Fixler, Idaho Statesman
BOISE, Idaho — Almost 13 months after he pleaded guilty, Bryan Kohberger claims he’s innocent and says he will fight his conviction for killing four University of Idaho students.
For a New York Times report published Monday, Kohberger provided a statement and interview for the first time since he was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison in July 2025 and dating to when he was arrested on suspicion of the murders in December 2022. He has spent just over a year in segregated lockup at Idaho’s maximum security prison south of Boise.
“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Kohberger said in a statement to the newspaper Sunday night.
As part of his plea deal last summer, Kohberger, 31, accepted no chance of parole and waived his appeal rights in exchange for avoiding a possible death sentence if he took his capital murder case to trial. But, like all prisoners, he maintains the right to ask a court for post-conviction relief — an appeal action that cannot be signed away — including on potential arguments that he received inadequate legal representation during his original prosecution.
At a change-of-plea hearing in early July 2025, Kohberger endorsed his public defenders under oath in court before Judge Steven Hippler of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District in Ada County, acknowledging the legal team led by attorney Anne Taylor had performed to his satisfaction. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2019, Garza v. Idaho, affirmed that a defendant can always appeal on certain Sixth Amendment grounds, regardless of whether they previously agreed to waive those rights.
Kohberger also signed a guilty plea advisory, a plea agreement and a written factual basis connected to the deal he accepted from prosecutors that saw him sentenced to the rest of his life in prison. Taylor also told the court she consented to her client’s entry of his guilty plea.
“I want to make sure that your plea is given voluntarily,” Hippler told Kohberger in court last summer, “and I want to make sure that you actually committed the crimes to which you’re pleading guilty, because I don’t want you to plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” the judge asked Kohberger at the hearing before twice reading the specific murder charge tied to each of the four victims.
“Yes,” Kohberger responded.
The shock development of Kohberger’s would-be appeal suggests what is likely the most high-profile criminal case in Idaho’s history is still not over, now approaching four years since the University of Idaho students were found fatally stabbed in their off-campus Moscow home in November 2022. The four victims were seniors Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle and freshman Ethan Chapin, both 20.
Already, Kohberger’s case has cost taxpayers more than $8 million, an Idaho Statesman analysis found. Of that total, nearly $5.5 million covered the expense of his public defense.
Under Idaho law, a defendant must seek post-conviction relief within a year of a 42-day clock expiring from the deadline to file a direct appeal of their conviction. In Kohberger’s case, his post-conviction relief petition deadline is the first week of September of this year.
”Why am I breaking my silence?” Kohberger told The New York Times by phone. “A lot went wrong in those plea discussions. I really do want to be heard.”
Merely filing a notice to appeal does not itself violate the terms of a plea agreement, the U.S. Supreme Court said in the 2019 case out of Idaho. But Kohberger’s effort to reopen his criminal case could jeopardize his current sentence and restore the chance of the death penalty — or even the possibility of a federal case where capital punishment also could be back on the table.
©2026 Idaho Statesman. Visit at idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
