Latah County, Idaho, prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students at an off-campus home in the city of Moscow last fall, according to a court document filed Monday.

The filing said, “The State gives this notice based on the fact that it has not identified or been provided with any mitigating circumstances sufficient to prohibit the triers of fact from considering all penalties authorized by the Idaho legislature including the possibility of a capital sentence. Consequently, considering all evidence currently known to the State, the State is compelled to file this notice of intent to seek the death penalty.”

Students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were killed in a home not far from the university’s main campus in Moscow on November 13. Kohberger is charged with four charges of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. An Idaho judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf during a hearing in May.

Following a six-week hunt for a suspect, Kohberger, 28, was apprehended on December 30, 2022. At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a doctoral candidate at the nearby Washington State University.

Meanwhile, Kohberger’s attorney Jay Weston Logsdon says there is “no connection” between him and the four Idaho students he is accused of fatally stabbing and that other men’s DNA was found at the scene of the crime, according to a new court filing.

The attorney characterizes investigative genetic genealogy as a “bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment” and writes that “there is no explanation for the total lack of DNA evidence from the victims in Mr. Kohberger’s apartment, office, home or vehicle.”

“Rather than seeing it as some sort of complex tree building that led to him, it appears far more like a lineup where the government was already aware of who they wanted to target,” Logsdon said.