Convicted killer Bryan Kohberger and his attorneys have been granted a new court date amid his bid to overturn his plea deal and stand trial in the University of Idaho slayings.
Kohberger’s defense team and prosecutors will return to the Ada County Courthouse on Oct. 15 to discuss the former criminology student’s push to disqualify Judge Steven Hippler from presiding over his post-conviction case, according to court records.
Hippler sentenced Kohberger, 31, to four life sentences without parole for the November 2022 fatal stabbings of four University of Idaho students — Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Kaylee Goncalves — after he admitted to the murders in a July 2025 plea hearing.
The new October court hearing comes soon after Hippler scheduled a status conference and evidentiary hearing for Kohberger in June 2027.
In a handwritten affidavit filed by Kohberger this summer, the admitted murderer claimed his former legal team misled him — and his family — about the damning evidence before he pleaded to the heinous quadruple homicide.
Kohberger alleged that “coercion, disinformation, false promises, and the withholding of exculpatory discovery” bullied him into entering a bogus guilty plea on July 2, 2025, according to a legal petition obtained by the New York Times.
The killer’s defense team has been moving to disqualify Hipplier — citing remarks he made during Kohberger’s sentencing that signal he may not have impartiality — and move the case from Ada County to Latah County, KTVB reported.
Kohberger’s counsel claims that moving the case to a different county could stave off the media frenzy surrounding the brutal stabbings, which has made it difficult to find an unbiased venue, the outlet said.
Prosecutors already filed a motion to dismiss the case, stating that Kohberger’s own admissions in a written factual basis document may pose a hurdle, People reported.
In the document, Kohberger stated that he is willing to “hereby admit responsibility” for the killing of the four University of Idaho students in their off-campus Moscow home, the outlet said.
He also admitted that the “killing and murder” of his victims was “willful, unlawful, deliberate, with premeditation and with malice aforethought.”
Kohberger then pleaded guilty in court as part of a plea deal that spared him the death penalty — but stipulated that he agree to never appeal his case — only giving him the chance of a new trial through a petition for post-conviction relief.
If granted a new trial and convicted, Kohberger will likely face the death penalty, the outlet said.
