Kohberger stands silent, not guilty pleas entered in Idaho killings

(NewsNation) — Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students, didn't verbalize a plea in court Monday, leading a judge to enter not-guilty pleas on charges of murder and burglary in connection with the November stabbings.

Prosecutors now have 60 days to seek the death penalty. The case is scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 2 and could take as many as six weeks to complete.

The renewed plea comes after a grand jury indicted 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. Until Tuesday, Kohberger faced the same charges, but those were filed by prosecutors rather than a grand jury.

The new indictment doesn’t change what Kohberger is charged with, but it does slightly reroute which proceedings happen before trial.

Having secured a grand jury indictment, a previously scheduled preliminary hearing has been canceled. Prosecutors may have been asked to lay out certain information to justify the charges against Kohberger at that time. Instead, they made that case through a private grand jury process and asked to seal the list of witnesses who testified, court records show.

Kohberger was arrested in December in Pennsylvania and later extradited to Idaho, where the killings occurred.

He’s accused in the five-count indictment of entering an off-campus home o...