Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in EnglishFor two intense days in a Boise courtroom last week, the prosecution and defense in the forthcoming trial of Bryan Kohberger, the 30-year-old graduate student accused of brutally murdering four University of Idaho students in an off-campus home, engaged in a combative back-and-forth on a multitude of crucial evidentiary issues.And while the judge has not yet issued his written opinions on many of the dozens of hotly contested motions that were argued, I, a longtime reporter on the case, listened and reached a startling conclusion.One of the defense’s primary arguments against the death penalty is, I believe, a ploy.It seems to me that Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers understand the evidence against their client is, despite all their protests to the contrary, convincing, even overwhelming.There is no getting around the fact that the small bit of touch DNA found on a knife sheath left on the bed of one of the murder victims is a match to the DNA found on a cheek swab of Mr. Kohberger taken in a Pennsylvania jail after his arrest.And while Kohberger’s defense team has indicated they will argue that a still unknown perpetrator (or perpetrators) were responsible for bringing the sheath already implanted with his DNA into the house, I am convinced that argument will be laughed down by a jury.The state realizes this, too. And so all along they’ve also shrewdly been laying the groundwork for an alternative, still unarticulated strategy.For the defense has submitted several filings, supported by expert witnesses and psychiatric evidence including neuroimaging, arguing that Mr. Kohberger is autistic. There is no getting around the fact that the small bit of touch DNA found on a knife sheath left on the bed of one of the murder victims is a match to the DNA found on a cheek swab of Mr. Kohberger (pictured) taken in a Pennsylvania jail after his arrest. Kohberger is accused of murdering four college students – Madison Mogen (second from left, top), 21, Kaylee Goncalves (second from left, bottom), 21, Xana Kernodle (second from right), 20, and Ethan Chapin (center), 20 – in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022. Kohberger’s attorneys, such as Anne Taylor (pictured), will likely seek to appeal to the court that their uncooperative, uncompromising client is preventing them from doing what’s in his best interest.The ostensible reason for this evidence is the contention that their client’s autism spectrum behavior leaves him too impaired to have to face, if convicted, a death sentence.That – in their judgement – would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. And indeed, Idaho recently has passed a bill making firing squads the primary method of execution for just, I suspect, this very case.But to date, Judge Steven Hippler hasn’t given these arguments much truck, emphatically dismissing one after another. Yet, the defense keeps on filing new versions of the same defeated motions.And here is, I believe, why. They are well aware that they are not going to persuade this judge in an Idaho courtroom that autism spectrum behavior requires him to take the death penalty off the table.Or that a Ph.D. candidate at a distinguished university with a 119 IQ (according to his own lawyers), a student who a professor in his master’s program at DeSales University described as one of her top students in ten years of teaching, is mentally impaired.But they are in the carefully argued process making it clear that their autistic client is a difficult one.They’ve stated he’s recalcitrant, often uncooperative, and refuses to provide the information they require to defend him.Specifically, they claim that he refuses to help them establish a reasonable alibi for where he was at the time of the murders.In fact, they assert, he doesn’t even fully comprehend the gravity of the charges that have been filed.Another complicating factor here is that sources close to Kohberger’s family tell me that Kohberger’s mother Maryann is encouraging her son to plead not guilty, in the face of mountains of evidence. Another complicating factor here is that sources close to Kohberger’s family tell me that Kohberger’s mother Maryann (pictured, in black hood) is encouraging her son to plead not guilty, in the face of mountains of evidence.And so, I predict, it might very well happen at some point this summer, when the case against Mr. Kohberger is at last being fully revealed, his desperate lawyers will play the card they’ve kept up their sleeve.They will appeal to the court that their uncooperative, uncompromising client is preventing them from doing what’s in his best interest. His autism prohibits him from making reasonable decisions. Therefore, they will want to take the decision-making power out of his hands.Despite their client’s protests, they will ask the court to allow a guilty plea – with the hope that in return the state will forgo the death penalty and accept a life sentence.Will this happen? And, if it does, will we be deprived of the surprises and revelations of a summer trial?At this point, nearly two-and-a-half years since the murders occurred, all that is certain is that a tense, high-stakes drama is at last going to be played out in a Boise courtroom.A former reporter for the NY Times, Howard Blum is the author of several bestselling nonfiction books, including ‘When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders.’
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