Bryan Kohberger was granted a new hearing date after he filed to withdraw his guilty plea for murdering Idaho college students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Kohberger, 31, is expected to return to court in June 2027 after he filed for post-conviction relief in Ada County District Court in July, according to the Daily Mail.
Judge Steven Hippler said that Kohberger will have a status conference and evidentiary hearing next year, at which point the defendant will be represented by his newly appointed defense attorney, Richard Rauch.
Kohberger previously pleaded guilty to the November 2022 killings of Mogen, 21, Goncalves, 21, Kernodle, 20, and Chapin, 20. The four college students were brutally murdered at an off-campus apartment in Moscow, Idaho.
He accepted a plea deal in July 2025, which was shortly before his trial was scheduled to begin.
As part of the deal, Kohberger was sentenced to four consecutive life terms behind bars and he waived his right to appeal.
Kohberger filed to withdraw his plea one year after he pleaded guilty. As Us previously reported, he claimed that he only accepted the plea deal because he was “advised” to “lie” by his legal counsel at the time in order to avoid the death sentence.
“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” he wrote in a statement to the New York Times regarding the petition.
If the petition is successful, Kohberger will be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and the case will go to trial.
After Kohberger’s filing was revealed, Goncalves’ family issued a statement slamming him for the decision.
“The mosquito you just can’t seem to swat’ — that is what Kohberger and his following have become to this family,” Goncalves’ family began in the statement.
The family went on to say that the article announcing his plea withdrawal “had little else to offer beyond a guilty man once again claiming he is innocent.”
They argued that “nowhere in the story — or in Kohberger’s own statement — does he not acknowledge that he ‘knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently’ admitted to murdering the four victims of this tragedy: Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan.”
“He appeared in court for a hearing before a judge, accompanied by his four lawyers. He chose not to leave his fate — or the facts of the case — to a jury. He never cried foul, never claimed he was uninformed or pressured, and never suggested there were problems with the discovery materials he and his counsel had reviewed for two years that should have been challenged,” the family continued. “He admitted his guilt. When asked whether he was actually guilty, he answered, ‘Yes.”’
The statement concluded with the family saying that the “real tragedy” of the situation is that “if even a fraction of the energy spent trying to free a guilty man were directed toward honoring the victims, there would be statues of them on every corner, parks bearing their names, and days set aside to remember the lives they lost at the hands of a narcissist.”
