Defense lawyers in Idaho killings case want gag order kept

Defense attorneys for a man accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death asked the Idaho Supreme Court on Friday to keep a gag order in place, saying a challenge to the order filed by 30 news organizations is premature and that media coverage of the case has been "twisted."

The defense team for Bryan Kohberger argued in a court filing that the news organizations should have first asked the magistrate judge who issued the gag order to reverse it, though they acknowledged the state has no rule specifically allowing outside parties to intervene in criminal cases.

"What the media really seeks here is a procedural victory, knowing full well it cannot win on the merits of any test, given the pervasive and grotesquely twisted nature of media coverage that has occurred thus far," Jay Weston Logsdon, with the Kootenai County Public Defender's office, wrote in the court document. Logsdon did not cite any examples of what he believed to be "twisted" media coverage.