If he had been convicted at trial, Kohberger could have faced execution by firing squad. That capital punishment method is newly legal in Idaho because of the ongoing nationwide shortage of the lethal injection drugs, as major pharmaceutical suppliers have withdrawn from the capital punishment market.

The man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in 2022 pleaded guilty on Wednesday to first-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors that spares the former criminal-justice doctoral student from the death penalty.

Bryan Kohberger, who was a graduate student at nearby Washington State University, pleaded guilty to murder in the killings that terrified the Idaho campus and set off a nationwide search, which ended weeks later when he was arrested in Pennsylvania.