In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.
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Bryan Kohberger's defense team opposes death penalty: 'Cruel and unusual'
Bryan Kohberger’s defense team is opposing the death penalty for the quadruple Idaho murder suspect on multiple grounds.
Kohberger, 29, is charged with four counts of murder and burglary after he allegedly killed Xana Kernodle, 20; Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; and Madison Mogen, 21, on Nov. 13, 2022.
Among Kohberger’s defense attorneys’ arguments against the death penalty are their claims that “Idaho has no viable method for killing” in a capital punishment case, the state’s method for obtaining a death penalty punishment is “unconstitutional,” a capital murder case cannot be prepared in 10 months, and the death penalty violates the “prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”
Executing Kohberger “by means of lethal injection or a gunshot as conceived of by the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) would violate his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment and his right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” his attorneys wrote.
BRYAN KOHBERGER RETURNS TO IDAHO COURT TO ARGUE FOR CHANGE OF VENUE HEARNG IN STUDENT MURDERS CASE
Bryan Kohberger appears in court in Moscow, Idaho, on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Kohberger appeared in court in an attempt to overturn his grand jury indictment for the 2022 murders of four college students in their home. (Kai Eiselein/Pool)
They also argue that death by firing squad, which is the second legal execution method in Idaho after lethal injection, “is not and was never constitutional.”
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In other documents filed Thursday, Kohberger’s defense states that “punishment which does not comport with the evolving standards of a modern, civilized society is cruel and unusual.”
BRYAN KOHBERGER TRIAL SET TO BEGIN JUNE 2025 IN IDAHO MURDERS CASE
Bryan Christopher Kohberger arrives at Monroe County Courthouse in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on Jan. 3, 2023, before waiving extradition to Idaho to face murder charges in the stabbing deaths of four university students. (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)
“The vast majority of modern, civilized society has already abolished capital punishment because the execution of human beings by governments is recognized to be a violation of the dignity and spirit of human beings,” his attorneys wrote. “The institutional killing of civilian prisoners affronts the modern, civilized world. The United States has been routinely condemned by the international community for continuing to execute its own people.”
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Meanwhile, prosecutors have argued that the state is trying to enforce Idaho law that says “a jury is entitled to decide not only guilt but potential penalty.”
KOHBERGER DEATH PENALTY WOULD COST $1M MORE THAN LIFE IN PRISON: REPORT
Investigators set up outside the home where four University of Idaho students were slain in November 2022 in Moscow, Idaho, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (Derek Shook for Fox News Digital)
“We are simply trying to fulfill our responsibilities under the law. To characterize it as the State is trying, is wanting, is trying to kill someone, is just simply appealing to raw emotion, and it has no place in this courtroom,” prosecutors previously stated.
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The defendant — a 29-year-old former criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington — is accused of stabbing the four University of Idaho students with a KA-BAR-style knife in their home near campus in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, a Sunday.
Madison Mogen, top left, smiles on the shoulders of her best friend, Kaylee Goncalves, as they pose with Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, and two other housemates in Goncalves’ final Instagram post, shared the day before the four students were stabbed to death. (@kayleegoncalves/Instagram)
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Kohberger was arrested in late December 2022 at his family’s home in Pennsylvania.
His trial is scheduled to take place no later than the summer of 2025.
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Alaska
An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post
For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.
“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.
“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”
When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”
Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.
Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.
The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.
All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.
One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.
Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.
It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.
When Israel comes along for the ride
You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.
But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.
Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.
“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”
Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.
One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.
We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.
Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?
My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.
But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.
Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.
So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.
“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.
And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.
Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■
Arizona
Arizona AG continues to investigate Glendale apartment complex after Friday deadline to fix A/C
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is giving a Glendale apartment complex until 5 p.m. Friday, July 10, to fix the air conditioning in every unit or face legal consequences. In a demand letter dated July 8, Mayes called Spectra West Apartments’ failure to provide air conditioning “both unacceptable and unlawful.” The complex could face civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation if it does not comply. Resident Javier Montes said he chose to live at Spectra West because of its proximity to his job. “The reason I decided to live here because my work is just down the street. So, it’s just a five-minute walk for me, and so it’s very convenient for me.”
CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. (KABC) — An Amber Alert was issued Friday by the California Highway Patrol for a 3-year-old child out of California City believed to be in imminent danger.
Emaria Peel, 3, was last seen Friday at about 7:17 p.m. in the area of Redwood Boulevard and 83rd Street in California City, according to police.
Authorities believe 31-year-old Charnay Mclin took Emaria. Investigators have not yet said what relationship, if any, Mclin has to the child.
The suspect was described as being 5 feet 9 inches tall, 185 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.
The child was described as being 1 foot 6 inches, 20 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.
Police believe they’re traveling in a gold-colored 2021 Kia Sorento with the California license plate: 36095DV
Mclin is considered armed and dangerous. Authorities wants anyone who sees them to call 911.
No further details were immediately known.
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