The judge overseeing the murder case against Bryan Kohberger has lifted his order temporarily stopping a defense survey of potential jurors aimed at aiding its case for a motion for a change of venue.

Public defender Anne Taylor hired a jury consultant to conduct the surveys, which consisted of several questions about the case. The surveys were to cover three Idaho counties — Latah, where the murders of four University of Idaho students took place in November 2022, and two other, larger counties where the defense would like the trial moved, as CrimeOnline reported.

Kohberger is charged with killing Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves in their off-campus rental. He has pleaded not guilty and plans to claim he was out driving alone looking at the moon and stars during the murders.

The defense survey was completed in Latah County, but some residents actually called police upon getting the phone survey, and on March 22, prosecutors filed a motion asking Judge John Judge to bar the defense from continuing, arguing that the surveys included some questions that violated a non-dessimination order preventing attorneys from either side from discussing information about the case that was not in the public record. Judge set a hearing on the matter for April 4.

At that hearing, the state said that it took issue with nine specific questions in the defense survey, and those questions were read into the record at the hearing — which was open to the public because neither side asked that it be closed. Judge heard the arguments, then asked the defense to consult with its consultant to see if the survey could eliminate “the concerning questions the State raised.” A second hear was set for April 10.

041924 Order Allowing Defense Surveys to Continue by kc wildmoon on Scribd

At that hearing, the defense argued that all the questions came from the “public record,” including media reports — as was the case with a specific question asking whether potential jurors had heard that Kohberger stalked the victims. That information, the state said, was false and had only come out of media speculation after a family member told reporters they thought it was possible.

Bryan Edelman, the jury consultant, told the court that he would not continue the survey if the same questions weren’t used for the other two counties since that would make the surveys unrelatable to the completed Latah County survey.

The April 10 hearing was also open to the public.

Judge issued his ruling last week, but it wasn’t posted to the court website until this week. In it, he ruled that “public record,” as used in the non-dessemination order, “means the public court record (i.e., information from public hearings and from documents filed in the case that are not sealed).”

Noting that six of the nine questions the state objected to were contained the public probable cause affidavit, he said that regarding those questions, the defense did not violate the non-dissemenation order. He made the same ruling on a seventh question which “was not based on admissible or inadmissible ‘evidence’ but instead asked about the feelings” of the potential jurors.

As for the remaining two questions — including the one about whether respondents had heard about any stalking — Judge noted that while they did not come from the public record, they were “read into the public record and discussed at length during the hearings, including the fact that these ‘media items’ may not be true.”

“Because the information is now in the public record, the Court does not see any benefit in preventing the defense from continuing the surveys or requiring that the two questions at issue be eliminated,” he wrote.

Judge also set a new hearing date for the change of venue motion to give the consultant time to complete his work in the additional two counties. That date is June 27.

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[Featured image: Bryan Kohberger listens to arguments during a hearing in Moscow, Idaho, on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. (Kai Eiselein/New York Post via AP, Pool)]