BOISE, Idaho — Attorneys for the man charged with killing four Idaho college students in Moscow followed through on their pledge to challenge evidence they assert was improperly obtained by police to prevent its use at trial.

Bryan Kohberger’s defense met a court-imposed deadline Thursday to file suppression briefs that identified specific evidence the attorneys want held back from jurors’ consideration. The much anticipated filings, which posted Friday afternoon to a public court’s website, totaled more than 160 pages and include the legal justification for blocking a variety of evidence.

Among the pieces of evidence Kohberger’s attorneys argued should be dropped is their client’s genetic information that they alleged was “illegally gathered by law enforcement,” citing the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The filing was submitted under seal, based on a previous judge’s earlier order to seal anything related to the FBI’s use of investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG, in the case. Prosecutors later acknowledged the advanced DNA technique was used to first arrive at Kohberger as the suspect.

Police have said they found a single source of male DNA on a leather knife sheath left at the crime scene, according to the probable cause affidavit. Prosecutors noted later in court filings that IGG initially pointed police to Kohberger, but also said that evidence would not be relied on in trial and, therefore, was irrelevant.

Instead, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson wrote, the DNA from the crime scene was later directly matched to Kohberger through a cheek swab. Thompson argued that police use of IGG was an investigative technique, rather than the evidence the state intended to use to prove he was guilty of the November 2022 quadruple homicide.

Kohberger’s defense attorneys — who have proclaimed several times in court that their client is innocent — argued in Thursday’s filings that investigators never would have landed on Kohberger without unauthorized tactics.

“All information in the affidavit was gathered because of law enforcement’s unconstitutional use of investigative genetic genealogy, and thus nothing in the warrant should remain,” the defense wrote in the filings.

Among other evidence Kohberger’s defense is challenging in public filings included: the contents of Kohberger’s Amazon, Google, Apple iCloud and AT&T phone accounts, citing privacy law violations; any evidence obtained from his parents’ home in eastern Pennsylvania and his apartment in Pullman, Washington, with search warrants; and all evidence from Kohberger’s white Hyundai Elantra through a search warrant.

In another filing, Kohberger’s attorneys requested a hearing, called a Franks hearing and named for a precedent-setting case, to challenge the validity of the search warrants obtained by police during their investigation.

Prosecutors have until Dec. 6 to respond to the defense’s 14 evidence suppression filings. A public hearing for oral arguments on the issue is scheduled for Jan. 23.

Kohberger, who turns 30 years old next week, is accused of the early morning stabbing deaths of the four University of Idaho undergraduates at a house near the college campus in Moscow. The victims were childhood friends Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, and Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; their roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington, who was Kernodle’s boyfriend.

At the time, Kohberger was a doctoral student in criminal justice and criminology at nearby Washington State University in Pullman just over the Idaho-Washington border. In alibi filings, his defense has said that Kohberger was out for one of his frequent solo nighttime drives, including near a county park in Washington some 30 miles southwest of Moscow, when police reported the violent incident took place between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m.

Kohberger faces four counts of first-degree murder and a count of felony burglary in the case. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if a jury finds him guilty. His defense has argued for striking a possible death sentence and awaits the judge’s decision after a hearing last week.

Kohberger’s capital murder trial is scheduled for next summer in Boise.

During the homicide investigation, the Idaho State Police crime lab in Meridian located the suspect DNA on the knife sheath’s button snap, the affidavit used to justify Kohberger’s arrest read. Investigators also obtained additional DNA from the garbage at the Kohberger family home in eastern Pennsylvania, which the Idaho lab found was belonged to the father of the male DNA from the crime scene.

But the FBI’s use of IGG, and initial assistance from a private lab in Texas the defense has said was Othram, helped in the process of establishing who might be the source of the suspect DNA. IGG entails submitting DNA from the scene of a violent crime to public ancestry websites to build out a family tree and begin narrowing the list of possible suspects. The method has traditionally been used in cold cases, but increasingly for high-profile active investigations, which has also raised constitutional rights questions.

“Without IGG, there is no case, no request for his phone records, surveillance of his parents’ home, no DNA taken from the garbage on his driveway, in a gated community, under a garbage collection ordinance,” the defense’s new filings read. “Because the IGG analysis is the origin of this matter, everything in the affidavit should be excised.”

The FBI also did not retain some of its records from the IGG process. And the affidavit in the case included no reference to investigators’ use of IGG. Prosecutors didn’t confirm its use until six months after Kohberger’s arrest.

For eight months, Kohberger’s attorneys fought with prosecutors over release of the IGG records through the legal process known as discovery. A judge eventually sided with Kohberger and awarded at least some of the FBI’s records to him, but out of the public eye under seal, and later privileges to review the records to experts working for the defense.

Now his defense is mounting a case against the use of all genetic evidence — and any other evidence obtained afterward through search warrants based on IGG — at trial, based on police having violated Kohberger’s constitutional rights.

“I think everybody agrees this case rises and falls on that DNA,” Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney Joshua Ritter previously told The Idaho Statesman. “Their ability to match Kohberger to the knife sheath at the crime scene is the seminal, cornerstone piece of evidence.”

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