Watch Live: Tyler Robinson back in court to argue contempt issue
by Pat Reavy ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Tyler Robinson returns to court Friday to address contempt and hearsay issues.
- Robinson's defense argues the Utah County Attorney's Office violated a court order.
- Robinson seeks to delay proceedings pending Utah Supreme Court's decision on cameras.
PROVO — Tyler Robinson, accused of shooting and killing Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, will be back in court on Friday to argue two issues before 4th District Judge Tony Graf.
Robinson and his attorneys believe the Utah County Attorney's Office should be held in contempt of court for violating Graf's order, which forbids attorneys from making additional public statements or comments to the media.
Robinson, 23, is accused of shooting and killing political activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025. He faces a potential death sentence if convicted.
In March, Robinson filed a motion to postpone his preliminary hearing. In that motion, they noted that an initial report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "indicates that the ATF was unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson." And the defense said it might offer the testimony of the ATF firearm analyst as "exculpatory evidence."
Prosecutors, however, contend that the defense put misleading information in its court filing, and say Robinson specifically left out a key part of the ATF report that said it could not identify "or exclude" that the bullet fragments recovered at autopsy matched the rifle found near the shooting that investigators believe Robinson used. In an effort to correct the alleged mischaracterization of evidence and prevent the potential jury pool in Utah County from being prejudiced by the misleading information, prosecutor Chris Ballard, the office's spokesman, appeared on several national news programs and sent a statement from the Utah County Attorney's Office to several outlets, which prosecutors argue simply corrected the misleading statements.
On June 1, Graf granted Robinson's motion for a full evidentiary hearing on the issue.
"The purpose of the hearing is to determine whether the evidence establishes the elements of contempt. Namely, whether (1) the Utah County Attorney's Office and its representatives knew what was required under the court's pretrial publicity order; (2) the respondents had the ability to comply with that order; and (3) the respondents, by making specific statements to various media outlets, intentionally failed or refused to comply with the pretrial publicity order," the judge said.
Each side will have 90 minutes on Friday to show why they believe the Utah County Attorney's Office did or did not violate the court order.
Also, Friday, Graf will hear arguments on whether hearsay from law enforcement expected to be called to the witness stand during Robinson's preliminary hearing, set for July 6-10, will be allowed.
Hearsay evidence is any statement that an officer might collect from another person and present at the preliminary hearing. That might include, for example, detectives who talked to Robinson's roommate, Lance Twiggs, although Twiggs is not scheduled to be called to the witness stand himself, or officers who talked to witnesses at Utah Valley University on the day of Kirk's shooting, but those witnesses aren't being called themselves to testify.
Meanwhile, Robinson has also requested that all state legal proceedings be put on hold until the Utah Supreme Court decides whether to take up the defense's appeal regarding Graf's decision to allow cameras and microphones in the courtroom. On Saturday, the Utah Supreme Court requested that the Utah County Attorney's Office and attorneys for the media each file a response to Robinson's petition within two weeks. Because of that, Robinson wants his legal proceedings to be stayed while the state's high court considers the defense's petition.
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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Related topics
Charlie Kirk killingPolice & CourtsUtahUtah County
Pat Reavy
Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.