A Utah judge ruled Friday that Tyler Robinson, who is accused of the attempted assassination of Charlie Kirk, remains eligible for the death penalty if convicted of aggravated murder. Judge Tony Graf Jr. ruled Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard was in contempt of a court order for statements he made about his opinion on the strength of evidence in the case. However, the judge ruled that he wasn’t wrong for making other statements in which he disputed a misleading characterization about specific ballistic evidence from a defense court filing. So Graf threw out Robinson’s claim that the proper remedy was to remove the potential death penalty, and instead, he said he would expand the jury selection process to ensure a fair trial.
“The court finds that striking the death penalty is grossly disproportionate to the misconduct and legally unavailable in this civil contempt framework,” Graf said in court. Prosecutors had argued they complied with the gag order and all other court rules when they “set the record straight” after what they say was a misleading statement from a defense filing that led to viral news coverage suggesting the ATF could not match the bullet that killed Kirk to the suspected murder weapon, Robinson’s grandfather’s rifle. According to court records, the ATF described the toolmark analysis as inconclusive and said it could not determine whether the bullet fragment found in Kirk came from Robinson’s grandfather’s rifle.
However, the caliber of the bullet was the same, and a spent casing matched the one found at the scene. Prosecutors said the gag order in Robinson’s case or state court rules did not prevent them from correcting what they viewed as a misleading court filing by the defense. But Ballard went further in at least one interview, Graf said, in voicing confidence in the totality of the evidence against Robinson. In doing so, Graf said he improperly expressed an opinion about Robinson’s guilt, which was the basis for the civil contempt ruling.