Why Bryan Kohberger Says Judge Hippler Can't Be Fair to Him

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

Tony Brueski (0:07)

Let's go to one more that's going on this week. Bryan Kohberger is back on the docket this week for post-conviction hearings. And the reaction from you guys is pure disbelief. How did we get here? Having parted ways with Anne Taylor and his taxpayer-funded defense team after entering a guilty plea, Kohberger is now working with the court-appointed post-conviction counsel, Greg Rauch. The core of his push, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel and arguing that he didn't fully comprehend the consequences of pleading guilty to four murders. Let's look at what you guys are saying and discuss. Be sure to drop your thoughts in the comment section as we will continue that conversation there.

How about just the face of this thing? He didn't understand what he was pleading?

He's a criminology student.

Lisa (1:03)

I have thoughts.

Tony Brueski (1:04)

Yeah.

Lisa (1:05)

Okay. So a lot of people are commenting on the fact that he might be on the autism spectrum.

Tony Brueski (1:13)

Sure.

Lisa (1:14)

I am married to a man on the autism spectrum. He would be considered Osbergers in the old days. His son, our son, I've raised him since he was seven, is on the autism spectrum in a couple of notches down. So I have some lived experience with this.

If he did not understand what guilty meant, that is a possibility. However, he is so intelligent. He a doctoral student or did he get his doctorate?

Tony Brueski (1:50)

I don't know if he got the doctorate, but he was certainly on the path to it.

Lisa (1:52)

He was certainly on the path to it. So he was a doctoral student. You have to be intelligent for that, even if it is just regurgitating facts and regurgitating what other people have said.

He had to be able to cohesively regurgitate those facts. So there is some cognitive ability there. But one thing I've noticed from my lived experience is that if you speak in metaphor or simile, which many of us in this world do, we love to compare things or refer to them as if they were something else, sometimes literal thinking, autistic people cannot understand that.

Tony Brueski (2:33)

I get it. I mean, I'm part of the club.

But I, yeah, he wasn't that. There's, I mean, because so many times people get lumped into like one giant group with this. And that's why it's a spectrum. And I know I'm preaching to, you guys know this, but, you know, there is literally, you know, sitting in the corner shaking, and then there's fully functional, you know, blowing shit away because you're doing too much, because your brain is doing a thousand things. And then moving up a notch, it's Bryan Kohberger. And he said notch several times. So Casey Kasem came to mind.

SPEAKER_1 (3:11)

See, Pat DeVasperger is right there, kid.

Tony Brueski (3:15)

So, so with that being said, I mean, Kohberger is not on the shaking in the corner area by any means. He's not in the I'm blowing shit away. He's somewhere in the middle and certainly has enough mental capacity to get as far as he did. He knows right from wrong. He knows. He understands what a guilty plea is or not guilty plea.

Lisa (3:36)

But if they explained it to him a little differently. And the reason why I want to mention this is because...

Tony Brueski (3:41)

He's getting caught up on the perks.

Lisa (3:44)

He was getting caught up on the perks. But for example, if my son makes a huge mess in the house, OK, which he's apt to do, and I come in and I say, son, look at this picture. What is wrong with it? He is going to look at the walls. He is going to look at the floor. He is going to be completely confused.

Until I say, what is wrong with this area on the floor right here? Calling it a picture? He didn't know I was talking about the mess.

He's looking for an actual picture. So that's just one of those little things about language that sometimes can be problematic. However, we are talking about a doctoral student.

Tony Brueski (4:30)

Yeah.

Lisa (4:31)

So I think that can be taken out of the equation.

Tony Brueski (4:35)

Yeah. It feels like a non-starter to me on what may or may not have been done with Kohberger. I am curious about, you know, now Anne Taylor, he's basically turning on her, claiming ineffective assistance. You know, this is a woman who put her neck on the line for him for a very long time and spewed his bullshit until she could spew it no more. And he's going and saying these things, breaking attorney-client privilege, which also allows her to break attorney-client privilege. Yes, it does. How dangerous do you guys see this being? I mean, this seems like an extremely miscalculated move on his part, probably part of his broken brain, to think that this will not spectacularly backfire at him, because I'm imagining Taylor probably has a cornucopia of shit that went on behind the scenes in her interactions with BryanKohberger, that would make for a lovely tell-all.