Death Penalty Fight In Charlie Kirk Assassination Trial Takes Major Turn

The judge overseeing the case against Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, decided to keep the death penalty on the table as a potential punishment.

During a hearing Friday morning, Judge Tony Graf Jr. ruled that “striking the death penalty is grossly disproportionate to the misconduct and legally unavailable in this civil contempt framework,” but found that a state prosecutor was in contempt of a court gag order.

It came after Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard made statements during interviews with TMZ, USA Today, PolitiFact, and Fox News disputing claims about ballistic evidence in the case that were mentioned in a court filing.

Robinson’s lawyers wrote in an earlier court filing “the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] was unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson,” which Ballard said was misleading and “misstated,” leading to conspiracy theories online that others could have been responsible for Kirk’s killing.

“The ATF was unable to identify or exclude the bullet as having been fired from the rifle,” Ballard previously wrote.

“Defendant reinforced this misleading inference by following it up with, ‘the defense may very well decide to offer the testimony of the ATF firearm analyst as exculpatory evidence,'” he added.

Prosecutors argued that Ballard was attempting to correct the record about misinformation circulating in the press about the case.

Graf recognized that Ballard “did not engage with the media out of a malicious desire to flout this court’s authority or to intentionally taint the jury pool,” but said that the statements went too far.

“Those additional public statements possessed a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the proceedings,” Graf said.

Graf also ruled that Robinson’s defense team will be reimbursed for costs incurred in pursuing the contempt ruling.