Kohberger says he was misled by Idaho murder plea deal

Bryan Kohberger is trying to unwind the guilty plea that ended the Idaho student murders case, saying he was misled when he admitted to killing four University of Idaho students in Moscow, Idaho. The former Washington State University criminal justice doctoral student filed a petition for post-conviction relief on July 27, 2026, after already pleading guilty, being sentenced, and receiving four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

The legal hurdle is steep. Once Latah County Judge Stephen Hippler accepted Kohberger’s guilty plea on July 2, 2025, the case moved from a capital trial path to final judgment. Under Idaho Criminal Rule 33(c), a defendant who wants to withdraw a plea after sentencing must show manifest injustice, a far harder standard than simply saying the plea was a mistake or that the deal later looks worse than it did in court.

That matters because Kohberger did not plead to a single charge. The agreement required him to admit guilt to all counts in the killings of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, and it spared him the death penalty. Before the deal, his trial had been expected to begin in August 2025. The plea removed that trial from the calendar, and sentencing was set for July 23, 2025, when Hippler imposed the four life sentences without parole.

Kohberger’s new filing turns the case from a resolved capital prosecution into a post-conviction fight over whether the plea itself was valid. He has said he was led astray by “false promises” and wrong information, a claim that will now have to survive the tight screening courts use for plea withdrawals after sentencing. In practice, that means the question is not whether Kohberger now regrets his deal, but whether he can persuade a judge that something so serious went wrong that leaving the plea in place would be manifestly unjust.

For the victims’ families, the filing does not erase the sentence or reopen the original negotiations, but it does threaten another round of legal uncertainty in a case that was supposed to be over. Some family members were furious when prosecutors struck the agreement without consulting them, while others backed the deal because it brought a close to a case that had already consumed nearly three years. A gag order in the Idaho murders case was lifted on July 17, 2025, after the plea, but the central issue now is whether Kohberger can meet the exceptionally high bar Idaho sets for taking a guilty plea back once it has been accepted and sentenced.