Order on Defendant’s Motion to Suppress Re: Genetic Information (State of Idaho v. Bryan C. Kohberger)
State of Idaho Judicial Branch | Feb 19, 2025
The accused was charged with four counts of murder and one count of burglary where four students were found cut and stabbed to death in their residence. After a hearing conducted on the defendant’s motion claiming violations of the Fourth Amendment’s provisions regarding search and seizure, the trial court denied the defendant’s motions to suppress and addressed the following issues in its rulings:
The defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a knife sheath located at the scene where DNA found on the sheath was associated with the DNA of the defendant. The sheath was also determined to be abandoned by the defendant.
A “trash pull” was conducted by law enforcement from waste bins set for pick up outside the residence of the defendant’s parents.The contents of which revealed DNA from the defendant’s father. The trial court ruled that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the search and seizure during the “trash pull” in question.
The defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the shared common DNA segments of a relative who had uploaded his DNA into a commercial database available to consumers.
