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Murder In Moscow: The Alternative Perpetrator Motion And Inconclusive Data Motion In Limine · Beyond The Horizon

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  Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome back to the program. In
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  Speaker 1: this episode we have two documents we're going to look at.
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  Speaker 1: The first one is the state's motion in limine, alternative
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  Speaker 1: perpetrator evidence. And the second one we're going to take
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  Speaker 1: a look at is motion in limine, inconclusive data. So
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  Speaker 1: let's dive into the first one, alternative perpetrator evidence. Case
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  Speaker 1: number CR01-24-31665. State of Idaho plaintiff. vs. Brian C. Koberger,
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  Speaker 1: the defendant. Comes now, the state of Idaho by and
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  Speaker 1: through the Latah County prosecuting attorney and respectfully moves the
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  Speaker 1: court in limine for an order prohibiting the defendant from
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  Speaker 1: offering alternative perpetrator evidence or argument without first satisfying the
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  Speaker 1: court that any such evidence is relevant and admissible pursuant
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  Speaker 1: to IRE 401, 402, or 403. In support of this motion,
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  Speaker 1: the state refers the court and council to state vs. Meister,
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  Speaker 1: where the Idaho Supreme Court addressed the standard for assessing
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  Speaker 1: the admissibility of alternative perpetrator evidence, 148 Idaho 236 2009.
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  Speaker 1: In Meister, the Idaho Supreme Court held the Idaho Rules
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  Speaker 1: of Evidence adopted in 1985 implicitly overruled State v. Larson,
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  Speaker 1: 91 Idaho 42 1966, IDEA 240. The proper analysis is
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  Speaker 1: under IRE 401, 402, and 403, IDEA 241. Citing State v.
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  Speaker 1: South 139, Idaho 718, 2003, the Idaho Supreme Court noted
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  Speaker 1: that the trial court must first consider and determine whether
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  Speaker 1: the proffered evidence is relevant under IRE 401, Idea 241.
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  Speaker 1: The second step is to determine whether the probative value
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  Speaker 1: of the proffered evidence is substantially outweighed by the danger
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  Speaker 1: of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury.
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  Speaker 1: or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or
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  Speaker 1: needless presentation of cumulative evidence, IRE 403, noting that the
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  Speaker 1: Larson Court was concerned that a defendant will attempt to
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  Speaker 1: admit evidence where the sole purpose is to infer that
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  Speaker 1: an individual other than the accused committed the crime. The
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  Speaker 1: Idaho Supreme Court stated, If the defendant proffers evidence which
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  Speaker 1: merely tends to mislead the jury that another person committed
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  Speaker 1: the crime, or the evidence is not relevant because it
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  Speaker 1: does not tend to make the defendant's involvement more probable
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  Speaker 1: or less probable, then it's within the trial court's discretion
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  Speaker 1: to find the evidence inadmissible. Mere inferences that another person
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  Speaker 1: could have committed the crime will most likely not be relevant,
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  Speaker 1: and if relevant, will be subject to the limitation provisions
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  Speaker 1: of IRE 403. In this case, during the course of
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  Speaker 1: the investigation, literally thousands of tips regarding possible perpetrators were
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  Speaker 1: received by law enforcement, with the exception of information regarding
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  Speaker 1: the defendant. None of these tips were substantiated. The state
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  Speaker 1: submits that any attempt by the defendant to offer or
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  Speaker 1: argue an alternative perpetrator theory without evidence specifically connecting person
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  Speaker 1: or persons other than the defendant to the homicides would
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  Speaker 1: do nothing more than mislead and confuse the jury and
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  Speaker 1: would also result in undue delay, waste of time, would
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  Speaker 1: be a needless presentation of cumulative evidence and unfairly prejudice
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  Speaker 1: the state. Under the Idaho Supreme Court's ruling in Meister,
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  Speaker 1: this should be prohibited. The state respectfully submits that the
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  Speaker 1: defendant should be precluded from offering or arguing alternative perpetrator
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  Speaker 1: evidence without first meeting the relevance and admissibility thresholds of
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  Speaker 1: IRE 401, 402, and 403 as analyzed by the Meister Court.
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  Speaker 1: Respectfully submitted this 21st day of February, 2025, and signed
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  Speaker 1: by William Thompson. All right, moving on to the next document.
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  Speaker 1: Motion in limine number five, inconclusive data. State of Idaho
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  Speaker 1: plaintiff versus Brian C. Koberger, the defendant. Comes now. Brian C.
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  Speaker 1: Koberger buying through his attorneys of record and hereby moves
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  Speaker 1: the court for an order limiting testimony about the statistical
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  Speaker 1: analysis of item Q13. 1, fingernail scrapings. Allowing such testimony would
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  Speaker 1: violate Mr. Koberger's federal and state constitutional rights to due process,
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  Speaker 1: a fair trial, effective assistance of counsel, and confrontation of witness.
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  Speaker 1: This motion is based on the 5th, 6th, and 14th
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  Speaker 1: Amendments to the United States Constitution, Idaho Constitution, Article I,
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  Speaker 1: Section 13, and Idaho Criminal Rule 16, and Idaho Rules
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  Speaker 1: of Evidence 102, 104, 701, 702, and 703. The requested
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  Speaker 1: limits are made to secure fairness in administration. To the end,
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  Speaker 1: the truth may be ascertained and proceedings justly determined. See
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  Speaker 1: IRE 102. Further, the above requested matters are ripe for
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  Speaker 1: consideration by the court pursuant to IRE 104 based on
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  Speaker 1: the existence of issues that involve preliminary questions of admissibility.
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  Speaker 1: The Statement of Facts In grand jury testimony, Jade Miller
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  Speaker 1: testified as the results of testing done on item Q13. 1,
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  Speaker 1: a swab of the left fingernail clippings from Madison Mogan,
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  Speaker 1: the data consisted of three-person mixture. The statistic, the likelihood ratio,
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  Speaker 1: was calculated assuming that MM was a contributor to her
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  Speaker 1: own fingernails. Miller testified that MM as follows, redacted, the
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  Speaker 1: data from the sample was redacted as to Mr. Kohlberger,
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  Speaker 1: grand jury transcript at 365 and 66. Miller testified that
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  Speaker 1: inconclusive means that an analysis, redacted, grand jury transcript at 366.
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  Speaker 1: Miller went on to explain that the likelihood ratio for Mr. Koberger, redacted,
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  Speaker 1: grand jury transcript at 367. The argument. The use of
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  Speaker 1: misleading language confuses and misleads the finder of fact and
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  Speaker 1: is barred by the rules 402, 403, as well as
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  Speaker 1: due process. in that evidence is overly prejudicial. The erroneous
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  Speaker 1: admission of irrelevant and prejudicial evidence will offend due process
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  Speaker 1: when it renders a trial fundamentally unfair. Estelle v. McGuire, 1991,
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  Speaker 1: 502 U.S. 62 and 70. Here expanding beyond the language
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  Speaker 1: of the report would prejudice Mr. Kohlberger in that it
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  Speaker 1: might allow the jury to infer that the inconclusive data
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  Speaker 1: would mean that he might be included. LRs are different
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  Speaker 1: from traditional statistics that courts and juries are used to
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  Speaker 1: seeing and hearing. The LR is a comparison of hypotheses.
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  Speaker 1: It is not a statement of identity or probability of identity.
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  Speaker 1: It simply asks the question, given the data, which of
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  Speaker 1: these hypotheses tested is more likely? For item Q13. 1, both
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  Speaker 1: tests for each individual assume that MM's data and DNA
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  Speaker 1: was present, so when the lab generated an LR laid
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  Speaker 1: out above, The hypotheses tested were MM, KG, and one
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  Speaker 1: unknown unrelated person versus MM and two unrelated persons. The
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  Speaker 1: comparison was done for all of the individuals listed in
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  Speaker 1: report number 7 and Mr. Koberger in report number 26.
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  Speaker 1: At the ISP lab, any number greater than 100 is
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  Speaker 1: considered a conclusive result indicating inclusion. Any number less than 0.1
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  Speaker 1: is considered a conclusive result indicating exclusion. Thus, if an
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  Speaker 1: LR falls within the range of 0.1 to 100, the
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  Speaker 1: lab cannot draw any conclusions and the data is reported
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  Speaker 1: as inconclusive. In her testimony, Miller did not provide a
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  Speaker 1: full context to the analysis. The lab reported a series
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  Speaker 1: of LRs for items 13.1, including an LR of 0.399
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  Speaker 1: for redacted and 0.485 for redacted, 0.20 for redacted, 0.0233
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  Speaker 1: for redacted. Lab report number 7 at 3. All of
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  Speaker 1: these individuals sit in the same shoes as Mr. Kohlberger,
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  Speaker 1: namely that the LR is exclusionary but falls in the
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  Speaker 1: range of inconclusive. Of interest is that when an LR
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  Speaker 1: was calculated for redacted and redacted, thus Mr. Kohlberger's inconclusive
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  Speaker 1: LR is similar to almost every other person for whom
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  Speaker 1: an LR was generated and focusing on his inconclusive LR
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  Speaker 1: would mislead the jury. In that it implies that the
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  Speaker 1: LR means that Mr. Kohlberger's DNA might be present in
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  Speaker 1: the sample. the court should exclude testimony such as redacted.
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  Speaker 1: More importantly, Mr. Kohlberger has disclosed that through further independent
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  Speaker 1: laboratory testing, he is eliminated as contributor to item number 13.1.
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  Speaker 1: When Mr. Kohlberger sought to overturn the grand jury indictment,
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  Speaker 1: he argued that Miller's testimony was inadmissible and misleading. The
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  Speaker 1: state argued that the testimony was presented to the grand
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  Speaker 1: jury as exculpatory and an effort to elicit favorable evidence
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  Speaker 1: for Mr. Kohlberger. The independent lab testing conducted by the
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  Speaker 1: defense related to item 13.1 is indeed exculpatory. Mr. Kohlberger
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  Speaker 1: is excluded and the state should be precluded from misleading
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  Speaker 1: the jury in any way. Conclusion A fair trial is
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  Speaker 1: mandated by Mr. Kohlberger's federal and state constitutional rights to
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  Speaker 1: due process, a fair trial, effective assistance of counsel, and
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  Speaker 1: confrontation of witnesses. U.S. Constitutional Amendments 5, 6, and 14
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  Speaker 1: Idaho Constitution Article 1, Section 8 and 13, expert testimony
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  Speaker 1: and properly elicited must be excluded. This was dated February 24th, 2025,
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  Speaker 1: and it was signed by Bicca Barlow. All right, so
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  Speaker 1: we're making a nice dent here in these new court
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  Speaker 1: documents that have hit the docket recently, and we're going
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  Speaker 1: to continue to put a dent in them until we
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  Speaker 1: have them all added to the catalog. If you'd like
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  Speaker 1: to contact me, you can do that at bobbycapucci at protonmail.com.
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  Speaker 1: That's B-O-B-B-Y-C-A-P-U-C-C-I at protonmail.com. Or if you prefer, you can
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  Speaker 1: find me on X at B-O-B-B-Y underscore C-A-P-U-C-C-I. All of
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the links that go with this episode can be found
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  Speaker 1: in the description box.