Bryan Kohberger files a petition to challenge his guilty plea and conviction

Bryan Kohberger, the man convicted of killing four University of Idaho students in 2022, is seeking to abandon his guilty plea and wants his day in court. Kohberger, who pleaded guilty in July 2025 to avoid a quadruple murder trial and is currently serving four life sentences, filed a “petition for post conviction relief” Monday in the Ada County District Court in Idaho. A petition for post-conviction relief is a way to challenge a conviction outside of the appeals process. The court record indicates that Kohberger is representing himself. It was not immediately clear on what grounds he was seeking the petition. But in an interview with The New York Times, Kohberger claimed he is innocent and was misled into confessing to the murders. “My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” he said in a statement to the newspaper Sunday night. Dismissing the state investigators’ account of what happened as a “myopic narrative” and a “work of fiction,” Kohberger said in the statement “its faulty premises were never challenged at trial.” “Circumnavigated by a broken plea, the trial never provided the public the clarity conducive to closure, and justice shall remain abjectly miscarried unless that plea is withdrawn,” the statement said. Kohberger admitted last year to killing the four students: Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — at an off-campus house on Nov. 13, 2022. A doctoral student in criminal justice at the time of the murders, Kohberger took a plea deal and was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences for four counts of first-degree murder and 10 years in prison for a burglary charge. While he told a judge that he broke into the off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho, and killed four of the six students there, most of them as they slept, he has never said what motivated the killings. Prior to the filing, Kohberger had not made any public statements suggesting he might change his plea. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said his office “stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out.” “My heart goes out to the families of Madison, Kaylee, Xana, and Ethan, who have already endured unimaginable loss and now must face today’s deeply painful news,” he posted on X.