Charlie Kirk judge denies Tyler Robinson's attempt to have potential death penalty removed

Charlie Kirk's accused assassin, Tyler Robinson, can still face the potential death penalty if convicted of aggravated murder, a Utah judge ruled Friday.

Judge Tony Graf Jr. found 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 — but he was not wrong for making other statements in which he disputed a misleading characterization about specific ballistic evidence from a defense court filing.

As a result, Graf denied Robinson's argument that the appropriate remedy would be 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.

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Prosecutors had countered that they did not violate the gag order or any other court rules when they "set the record straight" after what they call a misleading statement from a defense filing led to viral news coverage suggesting that the ATF could not match the bullet that killed Kirk to the suspected murder weapon, Robinson's grandfather's rifle.

The ATF could neither identify nor exclude Robinson's grandfather's rifle as the source of the bullet fragment recovered from Kirk, describing the tool mark analysis as inconclusive, according to court records. But the caliber was consistent, and a spent casing was also a match.

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Neither the gag order in Robinson's case nor state court rules prohibited prosecutors from correcting what they saw as the defense's misleading court filing, according to prosecutors. But Ballard went further in at least one interview, Graf said, where he expressed confidence in the totality of the evidence against Robinson.

By doing so, Graf said he improperly shared an opinion about Robinson's guilty, which was improper and the basis for the civil contempt ruling.

Prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted of assassinating Kirk during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025.

The back-and-forth has evolved into a war of words, with prosecutors accusing the defense of releasing misleading information through court filings, and the defense accusing prosecutors of "hubris" when responding in a string of media interviews they claim violate a gag order.

Robinson will attend remotely from jail. He has not yet entered a plea and is not expected to until after his preliminary hearing, which is scheduled to take place over a week in early July.