Murder In Moscow: The Balancing Act Between The Victims Families Rights And Kohbergers

In January 2023, Magistrate Judge Megan Marshall expanded the gag order in Bryan Kohberger’s murder case so that it applied not only to prosecutors, defense attorneys and law enforcement, but also to attorneys representing witnesses, victims and victims’ families. The amended order barred those lawyers from making public comments about the case beyond quoting or referring to information already contained in official court records, and even prevented them from publicly discussing the victims’ character. Although the victims and their relatives themselves were not expressly forbidden from speaking, the order had the practical effect of limiting their public voice because several families had relied heavily on attorneys to communicate with the media amid the enormous attention surrounding the murders.


The expansion quickly raised First Amendment concerns, with legal and media experts questioning whether the court had gone too far in restricting attorneys who represented victims rather than the prosecution or the accused. Critics argued that preventing those lawyers from speaking could reduce public scrutiny of the criminal justice process and indirectly restrict the press by cutting off important sources of information. Supporters of tight restrictions could point to Kohberger’s right to a fair trial and the extraordinary pretrial publicity surrounding the case, but experts noted that gag orders were not necessarily effective at neutralizing publicity and that restricting victims’ representatives was considerably more unusual than limiting prosecutors and defense lawyers. The controversy therefore became an early example of the difficult balance in the Kohberger case between protecting an impartial jury and preserving the victims’ families’ ability to speak publicly about a prosecution that had already become a national media phenomenon.

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