BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Attorneys for a man charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students asked a judge to take the death penalty off the table Thursday, arguing that international, federal and state law all make it inappropriate for the case.

Bryan Kohberger is accused of the Nov. 13, 2022, killings of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves. Investigators said they were able to link Kohberger — then a graduate student at nearby Washington State University — to the crime from DNA found on a knife sheath at the scene, surveillance videos and cellphone data.

When asked to enter a plea last year, Kohberger stood silent, prompting a judge to enter a not guilty plea on his behalf. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

During a pre-trial motion hearing, Kohberger’s defense team made a broad range of arguments against the death penalty, saying in part that it does not fit today’s standards of decency, that it is cruel to make condemned inmates sit for decades on death row awaiting execution and that it violates an international treaty prohibiting the torture of prisoners.

But 4th District Judge Stephen Hippler questioned many of those claims, saying that the international treaty they referenced was focused on ensuring that prisoners are given due process so they are not convicted and executed without a fair trial.

Prosecutors noted that the Idaho Supreme Court has already considered many of those arguments in other capital cases and allowed the the death penalty to stand.

Still, by bringing up the issues during the motion hearing, Kohberger’s defense team took the first step toward preserving their legal arguments in the court record, potentially allowing them to raise them again on appeal.

The judge said he would issue a written ruling on the motions later.

Kristi and Steve Goncalves, the parents of Kaylee Goncalves, attended the hearing. Afterward they said the details of the case show the death penalty is merited.

“You’ve got four victims, all in one house — that’s more than enough,” Steve Goncalves said.

Kristi Goncalves said she talked to the coroner and knows what happened to her daughter.

“If he did anything like he did to our daughter to the others, then he deserves to die,” she said.

Kohberger’s attorneys have said he was out for a drive the night of the killings, something he often did to look at the sky.

His trial is scheduled to begin next August and is expected to last up to three months. The Goncalves family said they have rented a home in Boise so they can attend.

Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022, appeared at a hearing in Idaho on Thursday as his lawyers attempt to eliminate the possibility of the death penalty if he is convicted.

Kohberger, who sat in court wearing a suit on Thursday, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary for the deaths of Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, who were stabbed to death in an off-campus residence in Moscow, Idaho, two years ago on 13 November 2022. He has pleaded not guilty.

At a hearing on Thursday morning, Ada county judge Steven Hippler heard oral arguments from both the county prosecutors and Kohberger’s defense team over capital punishment.

Idaho is one of the 27 states in the US that has the death penalty. The approved methods of execution in the state include lethal injection and, as of last year, execution by firing squad.

Prosecutors in Idaho issued their intention to seek the death penalty for Kohberger last year, as required by state law. In order to sentence a defendant to death after a murder conviction, the jury has to be unanimous.

In court documents, the prosecutors have argued that several aggravating factors exist in Kohberger’s case that they say could qualify for the crime of capital punishment under state law.

The factors they have asserted include that there are multiple victims, that the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel”, that he exhibited “utter disregard for human life”, and that he exhibited a “a propensity to commit murder which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society”.

But Kohberger’s lawyers argue that the death penalty sentence ought to be removed from his case, calling it unconstitutional.

They argue, among other points, that the death penalty would violate Kohberger’s right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, his right to due process, and that the death penalty goes against “contemporary standards of decency”.

His lawyers have also claimed that the criteria and standards for applying the death penalty are unclear and “unconstitutionally vague”, according to NBC News, and that Idaho’s requirement for a speedy trial makes it challenging for them to adequately prepare for a high-stakes death penalty case.

During the hearing on Thursday, Kohberger’s lawyers also argued that there is currently a shortage of lethal injection drugs in the US and in Idaho and that the state lacks effective means to execute an inmate.

“Idaho does not have a current means of executing anybody,” Anne Taylor, Kohberger’s public defender, said. “When somebody sits on death row and there’s no real means of executing them, that is dehumanizing to that person.

“It is anxiety. It is fear. it is the not knowing,” Taylor said, adding that the other method, firing squad, she believes is unconstitutional and has not been built yet in the state.

The prosecutors pushed back on the idea that Idaho does not have the means to put someone to death, saying that Idaho now has lethal injections available and that the methods could also change in the future.

“We just don’t know enough now, frankly, to spend the time and the effort debating what we don’t know in the future,” the prosecutor said.

The death penalty in Idaho has not been used since 2012 because the state has had trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs and then earlier this year, an execution was botched and delayed an execution when prison staff couldn’t find the man’s vein.

It is not clear when the judge will make a decision.

Kohberger, 29, a former criminal justice student at Washington State University, was arrested on 30 December 2022 at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania after weeks of investigation.

His DNA was matched to DNA found at the crime scene on a knife sheath and his cellphone data or surveillance video showed that him having visited the area at least a dozen times before the killings and that he traveled in the region that night.

Kohberger’s lawyers have said in court filings he was out for a drive that night, as they say he did often to hike and run, “and/or see the moon and stars”.

After he was arrested, Kohberger was extradited to Idaho and has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

Kohberger’s trial is set to begin in early August 2025 and jury selection is scheduled to start 30 July.

In September, a judge in Idaho moved the trial to Boise from Latah county after Kohberger’s attorneys argued, among other things, that he could not receive a fair trial in the courthouse in the local area where the killings happened.

Whether the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students can be punished with the death penalty if convicted will be the focus of a planned hearing Thursday, less than a week before the campus community will mark two years since the killings.

A judge in Boise, where the trial is set to begin in early August, will consider arguments from Latah County prosecutors and Bryan Kohberger’s defense team over the merits of capital punishment and whether the suspect poses a future danger to others.

Prosecutors have said in court filings that four aggravating factors exist in the case against Kohberger, who turns 30 later this month, making the crime more severe and the death penalty warranted. They are that there are multiple victims; the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel”; the suspect exhibited “utter disregard for human life”; and he has “a propensity to commit murder which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society,” according to the filing.

But defense lawyer Jay Logsdon, a public defender who is qualified to co-lead a death penalty case, asked the judge to strike the state’s death penalty request, in part, because he said executing Kohberger by lethal injection would violate his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.

The defense has also suggested allowing for a special phase if Kohberger is found guilty that would require the jury to determine if he is then eligible for capital punishment, an extra step that prosecutors want denied.

In another filing last month, Logsdon countered the state’s claim that a “future dangerousness” aggravator exists in Kohberger’s case.

“Aggravators are intended for deciding which First Degree Murderers merit the death penalty. Future Dangerousness does not do that — it focuses on the person, not the act,” the defense wrote.

The death penalty in Idaho, while it remains on the books, had lapsed as its last execution was in 2012; the state, like many others, has had trouble procuring lethal injection drugs. In 2023, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a law permitting execution by firing squad as an alternative method.

Idaho has since acquired the necessary drugs. In February, it planned to put inmate Thomas Creech, who was convicted of five murders in three states, to death after he had been behind bars for nearly half a century. But the state abandoned the execution after prison staff failed to establish an IV line, exposing the difficulties with administering the death penalty.

Another execution attempt of Creech, 74, has been scheduled for Nov. 13 — coincidentally the same day as when the four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed in 2022 in an off-campus apartment house.

Kohberger was arrested more than a month after the four students — housemates Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20 — were killed. Kohberger was a resident of nearby Pullman, Washington, and then a doctoral student at Washington State University.

A not guilty plea on four counts of first-degree murder and burglary was entered on his behalf in May 2023. Authorities have not publicly confirmed a motive, and a gag order has prevented many involved from speaking.

The prosecution says it expects at trial to present DNA evidence, details about cellphone use and security videos to connect Kohberger to the crime.

Kohberger’s defense has suggested that he often went on late-night drives and that cellphone tower data would show that he had been doing so miles away when the four students were killed.

Next summer’s trial was moved to Idaho’s capital of Boise from Latah County after the defense successfully argued there would be a strong possibility for bias among potential jurors and the local community does not have the resources for such highly anticipated proceedings.