America's Talking - Death penalty being sought for Charlie Kirk assassination

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

(The Center Square) – Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said Tuesday he will seek the death penalty for Tyler James Robinson, the man charged with the assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk. Gray told reporters he was filing a total of seven counts against Robinson, 22, including aggravated murder, discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury and counts of obstruction of justice and witness tampering. "The murder of Charlie Kirk is an American tragedy," Gray said. Kirk, a devoted ally of Trump, was shot and killed during an event Wednesday that 3,000 people attended at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxRead more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/utah/article_61555876-064c-4518-8c47-81d49398b0f9.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking. I'm your host, Esther Wickham, education reporter for the Center Square. Following the brutal assassination of a conservative influencer and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, the suspect in Kirk's killing, Tyler Robinson, appeared before a Utah judge this past week and has been charged. Joining me to discuss this is West Coast Regional editor, Dave Mason. Dave, the prosecutors in this case have the intent to seek the death penalty. Tell us more about this. Right. So Utah County, in fact, to clarify something, the name of this county, the official name of the county, is Utah County. So Utah County attorney, that's the equivalent of a district attorney, Jeff Gray said he has decided to seek the death penalty as not something that he decided to do lightly. He's doing that because the crime is a capital crime. It's aggravated murder. And there were some enhancements, you know, many times where prosecutors.

want to extend jail terms, or they want to have more severe punishment for a victim law, at enhancements to charges. In this case, one of the enhancements was the fact that it was done in the process of children. It was done because of the suspect

is accused of doing this because of the political beliefs of Charlie Kirk. So he sought that, he also put those same enhancements on first-degree felony of discharge for bodily harm. harm. Now, so the paperwork of the notice of attempt to seek the death county

was filed on Tuesday afternoon just minutes before Tyler James Robinson first appearance before a judge virtually. And under Utah law, the death county means that if he's convicted

then there will be an automatic appeal to Utah Supreme Court. So in a spirit of that, I think the prosecutors are being very careful to make sure this is a fair trial, because they do bleed on fair trials, but also because they don't want any conditions to be overturned on appeal. Now, Utah has been reported inaccurately by some media that Utah does not have grand juries. No, Utah does have grand juries, but they don't use them as frequently, perhaps, as other states. A grand jury is not being used in this case. So that,

means the prosecution has a burden to convince the judge to advance this case to trial. And to do that, they laid out a very detailed charging document. So it goes into all the kinds of evidence they feel they have. They cited DNA evidence on the rifle, on a towel that was raptor on the rifle, on a DAA evidence on a screwdriver that was found on the rooftop where Robinson allegedly fire the shot. And they also cite the text messages between Robinson and what they say of the text messages between Robinson and his roommate. Yeah, could you go in a little bit more detail about that evidence that they found in the past week since Robinson has been arrested? Well, for instance,

was all the DNA evidence, including that on the rifle, on all the trigger of the rifle. they also found these text messages in which Robertson is trying to tell his roommate not to talk to anybody about this, not to talk to the police. That added to his charges because the charges are,

you have aggravated assault, you have felony charges of witness tampering because he told his roommate not to talk to anyone to keep this silent. And there's also witnessed obstruction of justice because Roberson allegedly tried to get rid of his polling from the incident. I tried to get rid of the gun. So all that is obstruction of justice.

So the charges are aggravated and solved. The evidence is interesting, interesting because they went through the evidence which approved these law and text messages showing Robinson's alleged disdain for Kirk, going into the fact that he's trying to. He's hoping he gets away with this allegedly. And then also these text messages saying that he used another family member's rifle. So, you know, this is a different, you can say in the court of law, this is a different kind of poker game when you have a judge ruling on free trial hearings versus a grand jury.

Grand jury sessions are done in secret with a prosecutor overseeing it with no defense attorney present. and the prosecution does have to show their entire hands. In this case, they've got to convince the judge to bring this to trial. So they go into a law in detail. So you can see the prosecution's strategy because they're going to try to convince the judge to take this into a hearing. The judge has to determine this probable cause. And that is going to come up a couple weeks from now.

The first hearing in this has been set for a couple weeks from last Tuesday. And as well, let's start to discuss this. Also, incidentally, the judge determined that Robinson is an indigent. So that means the state must appoint an attorney for him. And another attorney who works on behalf of the county is going to file a lawyer for him before they do the next hearing, which

will also be done virtually. The wall last Tuesday was interesting because Robinson was sitting at his Utah County Jail appearing, you know, online with the judge. The judge of this case, by the way, is Judge Tony Graff. And as part of the pretrial orders for this, they prowl

protective one for the family. This is sort of a new development. But they brought a protective order for Erica, that Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, saying that Robinson is not allowed to contact her directly or indirectly. If he does, though,

for another charge on him. Right now, he faces seven counts. Of course, the strategy any time with prosecution is, you want to levy as many counts as you can in the belief that if the jury does find a person guilty on some counts, they'll find them guilty in the other counts. And you want to stack as many counts as you can to build up a start of a case as possible.

But, yeah, that's a, it's going to be very interesting without this being going through a grand jury, we're going to see very clearly what the prosecution's plan is. Now, have he said that, prosecuted, you know, Jeff Gray, who's the Utah County attorney, has said that there will be only occasional press conferences. So sometimes in these high full-file murders,

you see many press conferences and talks about this. But now Gray is going to limit that because he wants to make sure that, Robinson gets a fair trial because, you know, like I said, as a prosecutor, he believes in justice and fair trials, but he also, as I said, does not want to do anything to risk this being overturned on appeal. Yeah, and as the, as we, you know, continue to, to follow the trial, it'll be interesting to see how various people respond. There's been a lot of, you know, back and forth on social media, on different media websites, specifically focusing,

before we wrap up here on Kirk, Kirk's family, and. turning point USA as a whole. What can we see since, you know, the past week and leading up to the memorial they're hosting, you know, what are things that we've seen across the country in grieving and mourning Kirk's death? There's been a lot of efforts to honor Charlie Kirk. The most recent one that I'm aware of is in the state of Arizona, but the Arizona state president, I'm sorry, the Arizona Senate president, Warren Peterson has planned now to propose legislation for the next session that will rename a highway, Arizona, after Charlie Kirk. And I also want to mention this big memorial service, which is going to be, you know, Sunday in Arizona, it's going to be held at the

Allstate Farm, Allstate Arena, which seats more than 70,000 people. So this is a 70,000-seat arena in Glendale, Arizona. President Trump and Vice President Advance are expected to speak at this. So this will get a lot of momentum. And I think we'll continue to see this. This is maybe one of those big high-profile cases that will be in the news for a long time. Yeah, well, thanks so much, Dave, for coming on here and sharing what you found in your reporting. Those that are listening can go to the Center Square to continue to follow this story.