BOISE, Idaho — Prosecutors are urging the judge in the Moscow college student murder case to reject defendant Bryan Kohberger’s alibi submitted earlier this month and limit how his defense can present the evidence at trial.

Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson argued in a written response that the defense has failed to meet the state’s legal threshold to argue that Kohberger was elsewhere than the crime scene at the time of the November 2022 quadruple homicide. The document was filed Friday, but not posted to an Idaho courts website until late Monday.

“The defendant’s supplemental alibi response continues to lack the specificity required by Idaho code,” Thompson wrote. “The defendant is offering nothing new to his initial ‘alibi’ that he was simply driving around during the morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.”

Kohberger, 29, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of the four University of Idaho students and faces the death penalty if convicted. The victims were seniors Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle and freshman Ethan Chapin, both 20.

Kohberger’s attorneys have said their client, who was a graduate student at nearby Washington State University in Pullman at the time, was out driving his car alone when the crime took place. Police estimate the U of I undergrads were killed between 4 and 4:25 a.m. at an off-campus home on King Road in Moscow, which is located about 9 miles east of Pullman.

In response to prosecutors’ demands, Kohberger’s public defenders last summer filed an alibi that he was out for an overnight drive by himself, as had long been his habit, near the Idaho-Washington state line.

“We knew that already, and if that’s his alibi, so be it,” Thompson countered at a pretrial hearing in August.

At that time, Latah County Judge John Judge of Idaho’s 2nd Judicial District, who is overseeing the case, also referred to Kohberger’s claimed whereabouts as a “so-called alibi, not really an alibi.” He later granted the defense more time to bolster their alibi defense claim, which Idaho requires be filed ahead of trial so prosecutors have adequate time to prepare to disprove it.

Kohberger was an avid runner, hiker and moon- and stargazer, his attorneys added in the most recent filing, including around southeastern Washington’s Wawawai County Park the morning of the homicides. Kohberger’s cellphone data, including late night photographs from that month of the homicides, prove the claim, and a cell tower data expert would lend “partial corroboration” of their client’s alibi through testimony at trial, they wrote.

Since Kohberger’s arrest about seven weeks after the homicides, police and prosecutors have alleged that the defendant’s cellphone stopped reporting to the area’s cell tower network at the time of the homicides, and was possibly intentionally turned off. Prosecutors asked Judge to deny the defense’s plan to use the cell tower data expert at trial, and only allow Kohberger to testify to his whereabouts if he chooses.

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