Prosecutors are rejecting Bryan Kohberger’s push to remove the Idaho judge who branded him a “faceless coward” after he pleaded guilty to murdering four students.
Bryan Kohberger is back in court papers trying to unwind the deal that spared him a death sentence, and Idaho prosecutors are telling the judge to stay put.
The convicted killer filed a motion seeking removal of Judge Steven Hippler of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District in Ada County. Prosecutors answered that Hippler’s blunt sentencing remarks do not meet the legal standard for bias, and that the court remains the right place to handle Kohberger’s post-conviction claims.
Fox News reported that Kohberger’s new legal team moved Aug. 27 to boot Hippler, with a virtual hearing set for Oct. 15. The filing lands after a July handwritten petition in which Kohberger attacked his own guilty plea and the lawyers who steered him into it.
Kohberger, 31, pleaded guilty July 2, 2025, to four counts of first-degree murder and a burglary charge. Three weeks later, on July 23 in Boise, Hippler sentenced him to four consecutive life terms without parole, plus another 10 years.
The plea deal kept the death penalty off the table. The victims were University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. They were killed in November 2022 at an off-campus house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho.
Hippler did not soften the moment. At sentencing he called Kohberger a “faceless coward,” said he could find nothing “good or intrinsically human” about him, and described him as having “slithered” into the victims’ home. He labeled him “the worst of the worst.”
The judge was seen wiping tears after victim impact statements. He also refused to force Kohberger to explain the killings.
"Even if I could force him to speak, which legally I cannot, how could anyone ever be assured that what he speaks is the truth?"
Hippler went further on the motive Kohberger never gave the families.
"Do we really believe, after all of this, he is capable of speaking the truth, or of giving up something of himself to help the very people whose lives he destroyed? Rather, I suspect the so-called reason would be dished out in enticing self-serving and aggrandizing untruthful bits, leaving people wanting more information, more insight, and thus enhancing even further the power he seeks to hold."
Those lines are now the centerpiece of Kohberger’s removal pitch.
Outgoing Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson and Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Keith Scholl signed the opposition. Their filing draws a bright line: sentencing rhetoric is not the same as judicial bias under Idaho rules.
"None of petitioner's allegations against this Court, taken alone or together, have [met] that 'extremely high' bar,"
The prosecutors stressed what the motion must prove.
"the motion must show that 'the judge is biased,'"
They argued Hippler’s remarks do not disable him from deciding post-conviction claims. In their view, the same judge who took the plea and imposed the sentence sits in the best position to handle the follow-on litigation, as the legislature and Idaho Supreme Court rules intend.
Scholl had already asked the court for transcripts from the change-of-plea and sentencing hearings. The paper trail is not thin. It is being used to keep the case on track.
Before the removal motion, Kohberger filed a handwritten petition in July. He claimed his guilty plea was “not knowingly or voluntarily entered because it was induced by unkept promises” and “not voluntarily entered because of threats asserted by [his] legal counsel.”
He also alleged ineffective counsel. The petition aims at post-conviction relief, a path that would reopen questions the plea was meant to close.
The court appointed Moscow attorney Greg Rauch to take over the case. Kohberger’s family also retained private New York lawyer Jason Goldman. Hippler gave Rauch until Nov. 13 to file an amended petition. That date falls four years to the day after the murders.
Defense lawyers had pressed for more discovery time in the run-up to trial. Days before the July 2 change of plea, Hippler refused to grant the former defense team that extra runway. Kohberger then took the deal that locked in life without parole and blocked a capital trial.
Now he wants a different judge to hear his second thoughts.
The killings stunned Moscow and the University of Idaho campus nearly three years before the Boise sentencing. Kaylee Goncalves’s final Instagram post, shared the day before the attack, showed the four victims with housemates, a last ordinary image before the King Road house became a crime scene.
Hippler had earlier rejected a defense push to take the death penalty off the table if a jury convicted. The later plea accomplished what that motion did not: it ended the capital risk, delivered four consecutive life terms, and spared the state a full trial. Kohberger’s new filings seek to revisit that bargain from inside the prison sentence he accepted.
Thompson announced his retirement around the same period the opposition papers went in. The Latah County office still drew the same hard line: the bias standard is extreme, and sentencing language does not clear it.
Oct. 15 brings the virtual hearing on whether Hippler stays. Nov. 13 brings the amended petition deadline. The victims’ names remain on the record. The consecutive life terms remain on the judgment. Kohberger’s latest move asks Idaho’s courts to treat a finished plea as unfinished business.
A killer who took a deal to dodge death does not get to shop for a softer judge because the last one told the truth out loud.
