Why Bryan Kohberger Was Charged With Burglary as Well as Murder

Bryan Kohberger is facing four counts of first-degree murder in the slaying of four University of Idaho students—but he is also facing a count of felony burglary.

Prosecutors say Kohberger, 28, broke into an off-campus rental house in Moscow in the early hours of November 13 with the intention of committing murder. The four students—Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin—were found dead after police responded to a 911 call about an unconscious person.

Kohberger, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, made an initial appearance in an Idaho courtroom on Thursday, after being returned to the state following his arrest at his parents' home in Pennsylvania on December 30.

He heard the charges against him, and spoke to say he understood that the maximum penalty for each murder charge was life imprisonment or death. The maximum penalty for the burglary charge is 10 years. Kohberger didn't enter a plea and was ordered held without bail.

At a press conference following Kohberger's arrest, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said the burglary charge involved "entering the residence with the intent to commit the crime of murder."

The relevant Idaho statute (Idaho Code 18-1401) states that "every person who enters any house, room, apartment, tenement, store, shop, warehouse, mill, barn, stable, outhouse, or a building, tent, vessel, vehicle, trailer, airplane, or railroad car with intent to commit any theft or any felony is guilty of burglary.

Thompson, attorneys, investigators and others can no longer talk about many aspects of the case after Judge Megan Marshall issued a gag order last week prohibiting any of the parties from talking about anything "reasonably likely to interfere with a fair trial."

Jason LaBar, the public defender who represented Kohberger in Pennsylvania, had previously said Kohberger is "eager to be exonerated" and that he "should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise."

The felony burglary charge was described as a "layered charge" by NewsNation's Chris Cuomo.

"When you go into somebody's domicile without permission, that is a crime. It's a burglary," Cuomo said on his show after Kohberger's arrest.

The felony burglary speaks to "a level of criminality, felony, more than misdemeanor," he said. "And also, it is a felony murder, which creates a very heightened punishment and a heightened urgency within the law.

"Why does that matter? Because they're going to want to make sure they have as many irons in the fire against this man as possible, because they want to secure their prosecution and that goes along with the first degree murder counts, which is of course, premeditated, intentional murder."