It’s been three weeks since Charlie Kirk's assassination at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University, where nearly 3,000 people had gathered. Thirty-three hours later, authorities arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson in southern Utah, and he now faces the death penalty for aggravated murder. While the case against Robinson seems like an open-and-shut case, a prominent Utah defense attorney says the case is already showing signs of vulnerability.
The problem for prosecutors lies in the details of Robinson’s movements after the shooting. Officers say they found the suspected rifle near a campus parking garage, in the same area where Robinson admitted to an officer that he was trying to retrieve something he’d left behind. On its face, that’s damning. The catch? Authorities have not stated the exact timing of this encounter or whether the officer’s body camera was rolling during the exchange. If there’s no footage, the interaction becomes a matter of memory and credibility, which is fertile ground for a defense strategy centered on casting doubt.
In a case this politically explosive, that is a major liability.
Then there’s the matter of the text messages prosecutors are holding up as evidence. Robinson allegedly texted his trans roommate and romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, and appeared to take responsibility for the murder. But in a bizarre oversight, those messages came without timestamps. For prosecutors trying to nail down whether Robinson could have sent them when he was supposedly leaving the crime scene, that missing detail is not small.
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Defense attorney Skye Lazaro, who spoke with Fox News Digital, put it plainly: “If it doesn’t line up in a way that makes sense, it could definitely be bad for them.”
Cell phone records could eventually fill in some of those gaps, showing whether Robinson sent those messages near the campus in Orem and if Twiggs’ phone received those texts hours away in St. George. That would help prosecutors buttress their case.
"It could come out that those aren't as damaging as they sound," Lazaro explained. "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."
Meanwhile, online speculation is muddying the waters: talk of planted evidence, or faked text messages, or deep-state trickery. While conspiracy theories explode on social media within minutes of tragedies like this, they won’t do much for Robinson’s defense unless attorneys can show hard proof. As Lazaro noted, going down that road without evidence is a great way to lose credibility in front of a jury. Instead, the defense team, which now includes two seasoned California death penalty attorneys alongside Utah public defender Kathy Nester, will almost certainly focus on grinding at the state’s timeline until it buckles.
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 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.
On October 30, Robinson is due back in court in Provo, but expect more delays. The defense has already pushed hearings back to buy time, and Lazaro predicts attorneys will do it again. The longer this drags out, the harder it becomes for prosecutors to project competence and control, especially if gaps in the case remain.
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