Bryan Kohberger and his attorneys scored an early victory in an Ada County courtroom Thursday when a judge ruled he will be allowed to appear in street clothes at preliminary hearings.

Kohberger wore a blue shirt and suit for the second part of Thursday’s hearing, which was open to the media. The hearing focused on motions related to the death penalty. Kohberger faces a potential death sentence if convicted of killing four University of Idaho students.

Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were stabbed to death in their off-campus home in November 2022.

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Kohberger’s murder trial is not scheduled to begin until August 11, 2025, but his lawyers are already focused on the potential sentence. Prosecutors filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty in June 2023. Since then, Kohberger’s attorneys have filed several motions to take it off the table.

Defense attorney Ann Taylor argued to Judge Steven Hippler that Idaho is not currently able to execute inmates on death row and said keeping a person on death row without a way to execute them is dehumanizing.

Hippler disagreed with the argument, saying Idaho has legal means, including lethal injection and firing squad. Judge Hippler also noted that even if Kohberger is sentenced to death, it will be more than a decade before any execution is carried out.

The state argued that the defense’s arguments were too vague and should not be accepted. “They haven’t even suggested what an appropriate alternative would be, and we don’t even know decades from now what the alternatives would be.”

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Hippler said the court will consider those arguments and issue a decision later.

The defense then asked the judge to allow the testimony of professor Aliza Cover, whose research has examined capital punishment and constitutional law.

“I do not believe that the testimony will be relevant or helpful to the court’s decision on this issue,” Hippler finally said.

Kohberger’s defense argued several other motions to impose the death penalty, citing grounds of arbitrariness, that Idaho’s aggravation law is vague and a violation of the defendant’s Eighth Amendment rights.

The defense also cited the potential jury as an issue. “It gets to the point of why we’re arguing all of this right now — there’s a huge difference between picking a death-qualified jury and a capital-qualified jury,” the defense argued. “Death-qualified juries are very likely to convict in the guilt-innocence phase, and we’re very concerned about that.”

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Taylor argued that if Kohberger had gone to trial on the original October 2023 date in Latah County, he would have had to waive his right to a fair and impartial jury and effective counsel. Kohberger’s trial was moved from Latah to Ada County after the defense raised concerns about the ability to pick an impartial jury.

The defense argued it was a conflict of constitutional rights — specifically that Kohberger must choose between effective assistance of counsel or a speedy trial. In Idaho, a case must be brought to trial within about six months of indictment, unless a defendant waives his right to a speedy trial. However, the defense argues that it is not possible to properly conduct this legal process for a death penalty case so quickly.

Assistant Attorney General Jeff Nye argued, “The real issue that the defense is getting at here is that they didn’t have to waive his constitutional right, but they did.”

This story was originally published by TV court.