Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / Murder In Moscow Bryan Kohberger’s New Argument Faces an Uphill Battle With The Court (7/29/26)

Transcript

Murder In Moscow Bryan Kohberger’s New Argument Faces an Uphill Battle With The Court (7/29/26) · The Epstein Chronicles

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. Over
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the past couple days, we learned that Brian Coolberger was
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: going to challenge his guilty plea in an attempt to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: get a new trial, And as ridiculous as it sounds,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: there's certainly a pathway for him to do that. Now,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: do I think he's going to be able to get
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  Speaker 1: that new trial that he's looking for. I do not.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: And I think that Brian Cohlberger certainly killed Madison Mogan,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Zana kernodle Ethan Chapin, and Kaylee Gonsalves. And I think
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  Speaker 1: that going through all of this again is just relitigating
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the past. If he thought that he was being railroaded,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: if he didn't trust his lawyers, if he didn't want
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  Speaker 1: to plead guilty, then why did he? And don't give
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: me that bs that he had ineffective counsel and Taylor
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: jumped through every who possible and when all the evidence
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: was in, when all the discovery was looked at, they
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: decided that their best bet was to get that plea
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: deal because if they didn't go for the plea, Brian
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Colberger would have been convicted and given the death penalty
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and Frankly, that's what should have happened. They should have
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  Speaker 1: never accepted this plea in the first place. Now I
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: understand why they did, but they never should have. And
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I said it at the time. People like Brian Colberger,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: they don't just fade away. They have to remain annoying.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: They have to remain as part of the conversation. It's
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  Speaker 1: all part of his narcissism. So today we have an
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  Speaker 1: article from the New York Post talking about what his
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  Speaker 1: whole entire argument is hinging on, headlined, Brian Colberger's bid
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  Speaker 1: to reverse guilty plea hangs on a clump of hair
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  Speaker 1: found in victim's hand. Here's why it's grasping at straws.
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  Speaker 1: And look, I know that the grifters have already started
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: running with it and telling people that there's going to
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: be a new trial, etc. We are nowhere near close
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to that, nowhere near close. There is a long way
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  Speaker 1: to go before we know, one way or the other
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  Speaker 1: what's going on here. And it's my guess that Brian
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Colberger is not going to get a new trial, but
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: weirder things have happened, and if he does get a
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  Speaker 1: new trial, I don't want to hear a shit from
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: anybody after he's found guilty. This article was authored by
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  Speaker 1: Priscilla de Gregory. Brian Colberger's long shot bid to reverse
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  Speaker 1: his guilty plea for the murder of for Idaho college
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  Speaker 1: students rests on a clump of unknown hair found in
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  Speaker 1: the hands of one of his victims. What experts say
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  Speaker 1: he is likely grasping at straws after taxpayers spent five
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  Speaker 1: and a half million on his legal defense. Bro had
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: five and a half million dollars spent on his defense.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Five and a half million. How many private citizens get
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  Speaker 1: that kind of money spent on their defense. Not very many,
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  Speaker 1: but Brian Colberger did. But sure he had ineffective counsel.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Give me a break. You want to talk about ineffective counsel,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: go talk to Khaliff Browder's family. Coburger revealed on Monday
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  Speaker 1: that he's seeking to reverse his bombshell camion from last year.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: In a handwritten aff of David first reported by The
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  Speaker 1: New York Times, he claimed he was convinced to falsely
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  Speaker 1: confess by coercion, disinformation, false promises, and withholding exculpatory discovery.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm sure all of that occurred. There would
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: have been Brady Jillio discussions out the Wazoo. Does anyone
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: think that Ann Taylor didn't want to get Brian Colberger off?
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  Speaker 1: That was the goal, talk about a cap in her career.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So what people think she threw the case? Is that
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  Speaker 1: what people are saying that Ann Taylor was in on it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Tell me you didn't follow the case without telling me specifically,
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  Speaker 1: Colberger raised clumps of unknown hair found in Ethan Chapin's hands,
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  Speaker 1: as well as a failure of further inquiry by his
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: legal team. A former FBI agent, Chris Whitcomb, who was
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: not connected to the case, highlighted the issue of the
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  Speaker 1: hairs found in the hand of the twenty year old
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  Speaker 1: victim in his book about the Coburger case, claiming it
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  Speaker 1: was just one of many puzzling things about the evidence
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: surrounding the Moscow idahost layings. The hair didn't appear to
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  Speaker 1: match Coburger's since it was about six inches in length
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  Speaker 1: and was dark blonde, light brown with reddish tint. Witcom
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  Speaker 1: said in an interview with the Post Miranda Divine about
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  Speaker 1: the book, Brian Colberger's hair doesn't fit any of those characteristics.
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  Speaker 1: He said, more hair was found in blood on the
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  Speaker 1: frame of the bed left behind from Japin's hand, Whitcomb said,
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  Speaker 1: and the hair was never DNA tested. Wickham claimed the
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  Speaker 1: implication from Colburger's claim is that he believes the hairs
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  Speaker 1: could belong to the real killer. Other observers have suggested
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  Speaker 1: that there are many more likely explanations for the hair,
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  Speaker 1: For example, that it could be from one of the
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  Speaker 1: other victims and it was displaced in the violence of
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  Speaker 1: the killings, or maybe it was in Ethan's hand previously
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  Speaker 1: people were over at the house. Did he shake somebody's hand,
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  Speaker 1: Did he put his hand on something and hair got
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  Speaker 1: on it? A lot of questions. Right, certainly no evidence
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  Speaker 1: that Brian Colberger's innocent, and it certainly doesn't explain how
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  Speaker 1: is DA and they got onto the button of the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: knife sheath, or how the knife sheaths got there in
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  Speaker 1: the first place. The issue of the hair may be
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  Speaker 1: one of the only shots that Colberger has to claim
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  Speaker 1: his constitutional rights were violated because his lawyers did not
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  Speaker 1: have it tested for DNA, but it's still a long shot.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Legal experts said he needs to allege enough to try
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  Speaker 1: and prove that there's some merit to his claim. And
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  Speaker 1: so my guess is that that's him grasping at straws
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  Speaker 1: and trying to find something, some sort of way of
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  Speaker 1: getting just enough factual basis in this to try and
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  Speaker 1: get an attorney involved, said Idaho based lawyer Ryan Black.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Somebody's going to take debate, you know, these lawyers anything
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  Speaker 1: to get in the headlines. Black explained that the judge
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: will likely hold a hearing to determine if Colburger should
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  Speaker 1: be granted representation by a lawyer to fight his new request.
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  Speaker 1: If granted, both sides would need to file legal arguments
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  Speaker 1: and potentially argue the issue in court as well. So
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  Speaker 1: I think one of the tells will be if an
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  Speaker 1: attorney gets assigned. If an attorney gets assigned to the case,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: then we're probably gonna have some more proceedings, right, gonna
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: move forward a bit and see what's what. But if
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: no attorney gets assigned, I think that's going to be
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  Speaker 1: a tell that the state is telling Coburger basically to
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  Speaker 1: get stuffed. But ultimately Colberger's request has almost zero chance
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  Speaker 1: of succeeding, Black said, Colberger's prior defense lawyer, Ann Taylor,
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  Speaker 1: is one of a select group of Idaho lawyers who
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  Speaker 1: has enough experience to be qualified to work on death
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  Speaker 1: penalty cases. Yo, she did a great job. I'm sorry
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: people don't want to hear it. Whatever, she killed it,
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  Speaker 1: and I said it at the time. She fought tooth
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  Speaker 1: and nail for Brian Colberger even though the evidence was overwhelming.
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  Speaker 1: So anybody out here saying that Ann Taylor didn't provide
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the proper amount of counsel or didn't do a good
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  Speaker 1: job wasn't paying attention. I saw the defense team that
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: worked on this case. I've worked with a lot of
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  Speaker 1: those attorneys before. Candidly, if there were exculpatory evidence in
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: this case, I would expect that would have come to
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  Speaker 1: light some time ago. Black said, and I agree, there
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  Speaker 1: is zero shot that somebody like Ann Taylor is throwing
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  Speaker 1: this case. Zero chance. When you have a defense team
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  Speaker 1: like he did here, they were on top of things.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: They were very, very efficient, They were filing a lot
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  Speaker 1: of emotions. They did a lot of really good work
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  Speaker 1: on the case, he added. Two other legal experts agreed
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: that Colberger's request to take back his guilty admission isn't
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: likely to pan out for him. I think the petition
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: will lose it'll not be granted. Former prosecutor Nima ROCHMANI
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: told the Post still, Colberger, raising the issue of the
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  Speaker 1: Harris found in Champin's hand is the only possible narrow
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  Speaker 1: path there would be for him to actually withdraw his
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  Speaker 1: guilty plea. And he's smart enough to know that. Remember
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  Speaker 1: who he is, this dude who's going to school to
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: be a criminologist. We're not talking about some run of
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  Speaker 1: the mill dumb well, I guess we are, but I'm
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  Speaker 1: talking about from the sense of understanding how these things work.
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  Speaker 1: So you don't think Brian Colberger has a whole last plan.
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  Speaker 1: He most certainly does. Colberger has to convince a judge
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  Speaker 1: his lawyers did a bad job, or that favorable evidence
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  Speaker 1: was held back by the prosecution, and that those things
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  Speaker 1: caused him to make a guilty plea he wouldn't have
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  Speaker 1: made otherwise. New York Law School professor and A. Kaminski explained,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think he's met that burden. Now, obviously we
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: have to see what he says, but I don't think
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: he has a legit argument, and I don't think that
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it's going to progress to a point where the convictions
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: thrown out I certainly don't think we get there. As
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: for the issues of hair, we don't know that there
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  Speaker 1: is any merit to anything that he's saying, Kaminsky said.
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  Speaker 1: Part of the whole process will be for a judge
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  Speaker 1: to make a determination about whether there is any merit
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  Speaker 1: to any of the allegations he's making, and then ultimately
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  Speaker 1: whether or not that would have affected him pleading guilty,
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  Speaker 1: she said. Coburger, a former criminology PhD student, allegedly stabbed
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  Speaker 1: Madison Mogan, Kaylee Gonsalvez, Zana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin as
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  Speaker 1: they were sleeping in their off campus house in Moscow
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  Speaker 1: on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two. Colberger, who was facing
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the potential of death by firing spot if convicted at trial,
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  Speaker 1: took a surprise plea five weeks before the high profile
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  Speaker 1: trial had been slated to start. Prosecutors agreed to take
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the death penalty off the table in exchange for Coburger
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  Speaker 1: copping to the murders. You know, we talk about Glenn
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Maxwell throwing hell Mary's That's exactly what this is, and
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  Speaker 1: I find it very unlikely that it's successful. And knowing
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Brian Colberger. This was the plan the whole entire time.
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  Speaker 1: Cop to the plea, then say that you got a
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  Speaker 1: raw deal, and hopefully some idiot like can Duntz Owens
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  Speaker 1: will latch onto it. And at this stage that's what
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  Speaker 1: I think he's hoping for, that there is some kind
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  Speaker 1: of public push to try and get him a trial,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: but I don't think that's going to happen. And that's
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  Speaker 1: because there's a ton of evidence pointing directly to Brian
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  Speaker 1: Colberger as the person who murdered these four kids. So look,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: all we can do is see what comes next, Right,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: what does Brian Kolberger allege? What does the judge say?
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  Speaker 1: And then of course where do we go from there?
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: And when we have some more information, we'll get that
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: added to the catalog. Until then, that's going to do
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: it for this one. All the information that goes with
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: this episode can be found in the description box.