Charlie Kirk case stalls as accused shooter delays plea and eyes media limits
Charlie Kirk's suspected assassin Tyler Robinson is due in court Friday for a hearing on his defense team's motion to exclude news cameras, and he still hasn't entered a plea more than seven months after a shooting in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
A central aspect of the hearing is expected to include arguments weighing the public's First Amendment right to have access to the proceedings and the 22-year-old defendant's constitutional rights to a fair trial.
Erika Kirk, Charlie's 37-year-old widow and the designated victim's representative, has asked the court to safeguard meaningful media access as the case plays out. Two groups of local and national media outlets, one of which includes Fox News, have also asked the court to allow cameras to remain.
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Judge Tony Graf has already allowed a news camera to be present for the hearing, under the condition that it does not record any private conversations or the faces of Robinson's family, which is expected to sit in the front row of the courtroom.
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At least one expert witness is expected to testify on the potential impact of social media and widespread news coverage on the jury pool, with Robinson's defense bringing in a prominent social psychologist named Bryan Edelman.
Edelman has worked on a number of major cases, including playing a role in Bryan Kohberger's successful motion for a change of venue in the Idaho student murders and the trial of Buffalo supermarket mass shooter Payton Gendron.
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Robinson is accused of shooting Kirk during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University in September 2025. He allegedly climbed to a rooftop across the courtyard from where Kirk was speaking and fired a single shot from his grandfather's Mauser rifle.
Bystander video shows the bullet struck Kirk in the neck — in front of a crowd of roughly 3,000 people. He died from the injury.
Surveillance video shows a man in dark clothing dropping down from the far side of the building running off campus.
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Prosecutors have said campus police found marks left behind on the gravel rooftop moments after the shooting "consistent with a sniper having lain [there] — impressions in the gravel potentially left by the elbows, knees and feet of a person in a prone shooting position." They also found the suspected murder weapon in the woods in the direction the suspect ran.
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Prosecutors have said that text messages between Robinson and his romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, allegedly discuss wanting to retrieve the weapon.
"Stuck in Orem for a little while longer yet," Robinson allegedly wrote in the hours after the murder. "Shouldn't be long until I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still."
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Twiggs is cooperating with investigators and has not been charged with a crime.
Robinson could face the death penalty if convicted of the top charge against him, aggravated murder. He is also accused of felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and committing a violent offense in the presence of a child.
Kirk, 31, was a married father of two.
A preliminary hearing, in which prosecutors will have to show probable cause for bringing the case, is scheduled for next month. It's already been put off repeatedly in the wake of Robinson's arrest in September 2025.