Bryan Kohberger's Sealed Defense Memo Said WHAT?!

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the HiddenKillers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is HiddenKillers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

Tony Brueski (0:16)

All right, I want to get over to one other case that has some interesting things dropping in it as of late. And I don't know how big of a bum this is. That's why Eric Faddis is here to help us break it down and understand the latest in the Kohberger case. Bombshell Memo just unsealed in the Kohberger case. It completely blows up the narrative around his guilty plea in some people's eyes. We now know that just days before Kohberger took that plea deal in 2025, his original defense attorney, Anne Taylor, went to the judge and said Kohberger was struggling to rationally understand the case. They actually asked for more time to get an expert to help communicate with him, a Ph.D. criminology student claiming he couldn't comprehend basic rulings. Yet in the same breath, they insisted he wasn't legally incompetent. The judge said no to the extra time and just six days later, Kohberger pled guilty. Now his new lawyer is using this exact memo to try and rip that plea into shreds.

Eric, when it comes to something like this, was Judge Hippler, right? I think it was Judge Hippler in the Kohberger case. I think I'm right there.

Was he looking at this as just another, oh, they're trying to delay and they're saying that he doesn't understand things. We're going. I already gave you the deadline. We're going. Or was that legit, you know, were they having a hard time communicating with Kohberger and that extra time maybe, you know, was important so we don't end up in some sort of an appellate issue like we might be heading towards right now?

Eric Faddis (1:55)

When you're talking about a defendant possibly pleading guilty to a quadruple homicide, the court, the prosecutor, they want finality in that they want that to stick. They don't want this to try to be undone somewhere down the road like what's happening now.

And part of that analysis, Tony, is whether the defendant could make informed strategic decisions about his case. Well, if their own lawyer is going to the court and saying, hey, he's having difficulty understanding what's going on, you know, what's that plea really an informed, knowing and voluntary decision? This evidence seems to cut against that that's type of a position.

Robin Drake (2:40)

But that's his, you know, when he's in that, it's a fascinating thing that came up here is he basically is this PhD student too dumb to understand what he's about to do. And that's why my small brain breaks us down. But in the courtroom, the judge was so thorough in asking him and him responding to, he totally took responsibility for, you know, and he didn't ask him about, do you understand the legal proceedings?

He said, did you yourself kill Kaylee Goncalves? Did you, you know, Ethan Chapin? I mean, he actually went line by line. So he wasn't even talking legally. He was just talking about the actions themselves. As I recall, he could be wrong. So is that, that's still the bottom line though, isn't it?

Eric Faddis (3:24)

That's certainly what the prosecution is going to say on appeal. They're going to say, hey, look, this judge went to painstaking efforts to ensure that this defendant knew what they were doing, that this plea was knowing and voluntary. And in fact, that plea colloquy, Robin, was more extensive than a typical plea colloquy you might see in a case like this. So they really were detailed and ensured that Kohberger had no questions. It really appeared like he knew exactly what he was doing during that plea.

Tony Brueski (3:53)

So if he's saying yes to all this stuff, it's an observation on the part of Anne Taylor to say, maybe he's having some difficulty understanding this. We might need a little more time. Walk me through, okay, if he's having trouble rationally understanding something, and we need some more time, maybe get an expert in to help communicate with him. What the hell does that mean? Get an expert in there to help communicate the basic understanding of, there's consequences to your actions?

Eric Faddis (4:21)

Sometimes in these massive national cases, there are extraordinary measures that take place that don't happen in 99% of regular criminal cases. And that measure is one of them. I've never heard, Tony, never heard of a lawyer saying, I need some kind of expert to help my client understand what's going on.