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PROVO, Utah — One of the biggest vulnerabilities in the case against Charlie Kirk’s accused assassin, Tyler Robinson, could be the prosecution’s timeline, according to a prominent Utah defense attorney — and she expects the defense to drag discovery in the case on for up to a year before he finally gets a preliminary hearing.
Kirk, a 31-year-old father of two, was shot and killed around 12:20 p.m. on Sept. 10 while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University. He was a founder of the conservative student group, which had a national footprint and is credited with a resurgence of youth support for the Republican Party.
“There’s just so much we don’t know yet as this case develops,” said Skye Lazaro, of the Salt Lake City firm, Ray Quinney & Nebeker.
The defense doesn’t know much yet, either. The discovery process began Monday with a five-day deadline for prosecutors to make their initial disclosures, and Robinson’s team already pushed his waiver hearing back by a month.
Some evidence has been made public already, at news briefings, in comments from authorities or in the charging documents filed last week. Prosecutors included damning text messages between Robinson and his roommate and romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, in which he allegedly took responsibility for Kirk’s murder. But they don’t include timestamps.
Robinson, 22, was arrested in his hometown in southern Utah 33 hours after the murder. Before that, he allegedly returned to the crime scene, where police found the suspected murder weapon, Fox News Digital was first to report — still, authorities have not made clear the timing of his encounter with a police officer stationed at the perimeter.
“If it doesn’t line up in a way that makes sense, it could definitely be bad for them,” Lazaro told Fox News Digital.
Robinson allegedly told the officer he wanted to get something he left near a parking garage in the area, which is also near where police found the rifle, according to a law enforcement source. That wasn’t immediately deemed suspicious because hundreds of people had dropped things as they fled for safety in the wake of Kirk’s shooting death in front of a crowd of roughly 3,000. But the officer did a routine check on Robinson’s license plate, which authorities linked to the encounter after he had been identified as a potential suspect, according to the source.
Stay up to date on the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk
If the officer’s bodycam wasn’t turned on, that could be an opening for Robinson’s defense to attempt to poke holes in the investigation, Lazaro said.
Additional details about the texts could also be more damaging to Robinson’s defense, Lazaro said.
“A lot of times, what you can get when you subpoena cellphone records are where messages were sent from,” she said.
If the subpoenas show they were sent from Robinson’s phone in Orem and received by his partner’s phone in St. George, that would align with the prosecution’s allegations.
“The defense is going to want to get, going to wanna see, and probably spend a lot of time, whether they get their own forensic expert to analyze it or do it themselves, to really piece together a timeline,” she added.
Twiggs is cooperating with investigators, authorities have said. But the defense is expected to do its best to undermine the state’s case.
“It could come out that those aren’t as damaging as they sound,” Lazaro said. “You have to keep in mind, when the government writes a probable cause affidavit, it’s their greatest hits that they have in the moment.”
Gaps in what authorities have said publicly have also led to speculation online, much of which is unsubstantiated, and that won’t be of much use to the defense, Lazaro added.
“There are some conspiracy theories about…somebody else wrote the text messages or something was planted,” Lazaro said. “As a defense attorney, unless you absolutely know and can prove that something like that happened, that’s not the greatest defense, right? I think you tend to lose credibility unless you really can substantiate it.”
The charging documents don’t contain anything exculpatory that the defense would try to use later. So they’ll seek those items in discovery or through witness testimony at a preliminary hearing, which could still be a ways off, she said.
Robinson has not yet entered a plea. At a waiver hearing Monday, the court accepted two out-of-state attorneys to assist his Utah public defender, Kathy Nester. They are Michael Burt and Richard Novak, both from California.
In Utah County, where a large proportion of residents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have traveled widely as part of their mission work, she said she does not expect their Golden State ties to be a hindrance.
“If you were trying this case in Eastern Montana, I would say it’s probably not helpful to have a big city lawyer, because people don’t like big city people telling them what to do, or telling them the way they should do their job, or beating up on their cops,” she said. “I don’t think that will be as big of a problem here.”
Plus, their experience defending capital cases in multiple states and at the federal level also shows this isn’t the first time they’ve had to appear as out-of-towners on behalf of a client, she said.
The Justice Department has not yet announced federal charges, but they remain a possibility.
Nester asked the court for more time to decide whether Robinson will force a preliminary hearing, an evidentiary hearing in which the prosecution is required to show probable cause in court before the case can move forward.
While there’s no expectation that Robinson’s defense would have the case tossed at such a hearing, it could still give the defense a chance to find a better footing before trial — such as a chance to cross-examine witnesses before trial and see how well they perform under intense questioning.
“It’s probable cause, it’s in a light most favorable to the state,” Lazaro said.
In Utah, preliminary hearings can be delayed for months in cases involving serious felonies, sometimes up to a year, according to Lazaro. Robinson faces a top charge of aggravated murder, which carries the death penalty, making it as serious as it gets.
His next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 30 in Provo, but Lazaro said she expects his defense to ask for more time once again.
