If Bryan Kohberger is convicted of murdering four University of Idaho college students, sentencing him to death could be costly to state taxpayers, the Idaho Statesman reports.
Kohberger, 28, faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in connection with the slayings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin in the early morning hours of November 13 at an off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho.
Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson in late June said his office planned to seek the death penalty if Kohberger is convicted.
Should that happen, it’s possible that putting Kohberger on death row would cost an additional $1 million compared to life in prison. The newspaper cited death penalty analyses from Washington state and Oregon that found capital punishment added about $1 million on average to the cost of a sentence.
In one example, the post-sentencing incarceration of 67-year-old Gerald Pizzuto, who has been on Idaho’s death row since 1986 for murdering two people, has cost about $1.3 million. That is in part because Pizzuto has been treated for multiple medical conditions while in prison, including terminal cancer, according to Fox News.
Pizzuto has been able to avoid five scheduled executions and is presently in hospice care.
Idaho has not executed an inmate since 2012 and has done so only twice in the last three decades, according to the Statesman.
At the time of the November slayings, Kohberger was a criminology Ph.D. student at the nearby Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. A judge in late May entered a plea of not guilty on Kohberger’s behalf.
A trial is scheduled to begin in October.
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[Feature Photo: Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom during a hearing Tuesday, June 27, 2023, at the Latah County Courthouse in Moscow, Idaho. Defense attorneys for Kohberger who is charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students asked a judge Tuesday to order prosecutors to turn over more records, laying the groundwork for challenges to the case. Kohberger, 28, was indicted in May on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in connection with the Nov. 13, 2022, slayings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin at a rental home near the University of Idaho campus. (August Frank/Lewiston Tribune via AP, Pool)
