Bryan Kohberger has been assigned a new lawyer as he pursues post-conviction relief, a legal effort aimed at undoing the guilty plea he entered in connection with the fatal stabbings of four University of Idaho students in November 2022. Kohberger filed the petition on his own roughly a year after acknowledging responsibility in the high-profile Idaho murders case.
The 30-year-old is now represented by Greg Rauch, an attorney based in Moscow, Idaho.
Rauch told Fox News Digital that, as of his appointment Monday morning, he had not yet reviewed Kohberger’s petition, examined the full case file or spoken with his new client. He said he expects to first connect with Kohberger by phone before arranging an in-person meeting at the prison.
“Today, my goal is to set up phone contact with him,” Rauch said. “I gotta read the case file…I gotta check out the police reports. I gotta talk to him.”
Kohberger is currently housed in the J-Block unit at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, located roughly 300 miles south of Moscow, where the killings occurred near the University of Idaho campus.
In July 2025, Kohberger pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. Judge Steven Hippler later handed down four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, along with an additional 10-year sentence.
As part of the plea agreement, Kohberger gave up his right to appeal. However, that waiver does not prevent him from seeking post-conviction relief, a separate legal path that could potentially revive proceedings in the case.
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Should Kohberger succeed in withdrawing his guilty plea, the case could return to court for trial — and he could once again face the possibility of the death penalty.
Kohberger, in a handwritten petition on July 27, 2026, claimed that he was “convinced to falsely confess,” by his high-profile defense team of Anne Taylor, Elisa Massoth and Bicka Barlow. He alleged that they didn’t tell him about “exculpatory discovery” — hair found at the scene that was not tested for DNA. It was excluded as Kohberger’s by a physical analysis.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador told Fox News Digital shortly after Kohberger’s petition was filed that his office is “ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out.”
Police found Kohberger’s DNA on a knife sheath in a bed with two of the four victims, Mogen and Goncalves. They also tracked his vehicle coming and going, and forensic investigators were prepared to testify about how, although he shut his phone off during the murders, the evidence suggested he drove to and from the crime scene anyway.
Separately, Sy Ray, a former expert witness working for Kohberger’s defense team, last week alleged that there is additional damaging evidence that investigators hadn’t introduced before Kohberger’s guilty plea.
“They’ve got to release this report, because the report that changes everything has not been released,” Ray told Fox News Digital Sunday. “It hasn’t been unsealed.”
Ray said that document, known as the location database of record or LOCDBOR report, contains “pattern of life” location data that he alleges shows Kohberger stalked the victims, that he may have been inside the victims’ home before the murders and contains clues as to where he may have disposed of evidence.
“If he ever does walk, he will kill again,” he said.
