Episode Details

The Associated Press, joined by a coalition of roughly 20 news organizations, moved to intervene in the Bryan Kohberger case in May 2023 as the fight over public access and the sweeping gag order surrounding the proceedings intensified. The media coalition argued that the nondissemination order imposed on attorneys, law-enforcement personnel and others connected to the case was so broad that it interfered with the press and public’s First Amendment rights to gather information about one of the most closely watched murder prosecutions in the country. The AP was joined by organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Seattle Times, the Idaho Press Club, The Spokesman-Review, EastIdahoNews.com and several television organizations. Their motion was not an attempt to become a party to the murder prosecution itself or weigh in on Kohberger’s guilt or innocence. Instead, the organizations wanted standing to challenge restrictions that they believed unnecessarily prevented journalists from obtaining information from people connected to the case. They argued that protecting Kohberger’s right to a fair trial was important, but that the court also had to consider the constitutional interests of the press and the public rather than automatically allowing secrecy to dominate the proceedings.

Judge John Judge ultimately granted the media coalition permission to intervene for the limited purpose of challenging the nondissemination order, allowing the AP and the other organizations to formally make their arguments before the court. The dispute became part of a much larger battle over how much access journalists should have to the Kohberger proceedings, including later fights over cameras inside the courtroom. The media organizations repeatedly maintained that extensive publicity surrounding the murders did not eliminate the public’s constitutional interest in observing and reporting on the judicial process, while Kohberger’s defense argued that uncontrolled publicity threatened his ability to receive a fair trial. The court attempted to balance those competing interests rather than giving either side unlimited authority, and the media coalition’s intervention ensured that the press had its own lawyers arguing directly for access instead of depending upon prosecutors or the defense to protect those interests. Later in 2023, the coalition again sought to intervene when Kohberger asked the court to remove cameras, although the court ruled that the AP did not have an automatic right to intervene at that particular stage and instead permitted the coalition to participate as an interested media group. The fight illustrated how the Kohberger prosecution was being litigated on two parallel tracks: the criminal case itself and an unusually intense constitutional battle over secrecy, cameras, pretrial publicity and how much of the case the public would actually be permitted to see.


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