Media companies file petition to reverse gag order on coverage of Idaho murders

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Thirty news outlets asked the Idaho Supreme Court to reverse a gag order that barred law enforcement, attorneys, and others from speaking publicly about the trial of Bryan Kohberger, who has been accused of stabbing and murdering four University of Idaho (UI) students. 

Key Players

A group of regional and national media outlets, including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, petitioned the Idaho Supreme Court to override the gag order.

Magistrate Judge Megan Marshall issued an order prohibiting the  parties involved in the case from making “any extrajudicial statement, written or oral,” about it.    

Bryan Kohberger, a graduate student of criminology at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30, 2022, and charged with the murders of four UI students in their off-campus home.

Further Details

The Nov. 13, 2022, killings of Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Madison Mogen, shocked the rural town of Moscow, Idaho. The case attracted national attention, leading social media users to try to identify the killer on their own, and law enforcement was stuck with some initial dead-end leads. 

On Jan. 3, 2023, the state of Idaho and Kohberger’s legal team asked Marshall to agree to a nondissemination order because of the “great deal of publicity” surrounding the case, citing Supreme Court precedent that nondissemination orders are the most constitutional method to reduce the effects of pretrial publicity. 

That same day, Marshall entered another nondissemination order that barred “investigators, law enforcement personnel, attorneys, and agents of the prosecuting attorney or defense attorney” from making any statements related to the case on matters not contained in public court records. 

On Jan. 18, Marshall amended the order to apply to attorneys representing the victims’ families, witnesses, or survivors, The Associated Press reported. Marshall stressed the necessity of balancing Free Speech with the importance of a fair and unbiased trial. 

Outcome

News outlets join to oppose gag order

On Feb. 6, the coalition of press organizations petitioned the Idaho Supreme Court to overturn Marshall’s order. Josh Hoffner, the AP national news director, decried the order as “unnecessarily sweeping and broad  … (it) severely impedes the public’s understanding of a significant criminal investigation that profoundly impacted the community.” 

While the order did not specifically apply to members of the press, the coalition identified eight instances in which parties affected by the gag order were unable to speak to reporters. Alleged instances included journalists having public records requests denied; police departments refusing to provide updates on the status of the investigation; and the families of victims being unable to speak.

“Petitioners do not make the news; they report the news. They cannot report what they cannot gather,” Wendy Olson, a coalition lawyer, said, NBC Philadelphia reported.  

The petition contended there was insufficient evidence to warrant the order, and that it unfairly limited speech that had not yet been proven to prejudice the trial, as no hearings had taken place. 

“More speech does not mean a less fair trial; the speech at issue must be the kind that could prejudice a jury. And even when publicity may cause prejudice, the answer is not always to suppress the speech,” Olson said.

Idaho Supreme Court grants order allowing response from the state and defense

On Feb. 23, 2023, the Idaho Supreme Court granted an order that allowed both the state and the defense to “file response briefs” to the coalition by March 3, 2023.

On March 3, Kohberger’s attorneys asked the Idaho Supreme Court to keep the gag order in place, called the challenge to the order “premature,” and said media coverage of the case had been “twisted,” CBS News reported. 

“What the media really seeks here is a procedural victory, knowing full well it cannot win on the merits of any test, given the pervasive and grotesquely twisted nature of media coverage that has occurred thus far,” wrote Jay Weston Logsdon, a public defender representing Kohberger. 

As of March 20, 2023, there were no further developments.