A veteran attorney in Utah is raising the alarm over a potential flaw in the case against Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin who shot and killed conservative icon Charlie Kirk on September 10, that could allow the accused killer to walk free.“There’s just so much we don’t know yet as this case develops,” Skye Lazaro, of the Salt Lake City firm, Ray Quinney & Nebeker, told Fox News.
Kirk, 31, was killed by a single shot to the neck allegedly fired by Robinson from a rooftop overlooking Kirk’s tent as he spoke to college students at Utah Valley University. He was the founder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, which boasts thousands of chapters on high schools and college campuses.
Discovery in the case against Robinson began on Monday with a five-day deadline for prosecutors to make their initial disclosures, while Robinson’s lawyers have already pushed his waiver hearing back by a month.
Some evidence against Robinson has already been released in charging documents and through public statements made by prosecutors at press conferences when the charges were announced. Prosecutors shared damning text messages in which the accused killer detailed the killing to his transgender romantic partner and admitted to killing Kirk in a group chat with several friends.
Robinson, 22, was arrested in his hometown a little over 33 hours after the murder. He allegedly confessed the crime to his father, who put him in touch with a youth pastor who ultimately convinced the accused killer to turn himself in.
Prior to turning himself in, Robinson allegedly returned to the scene of the crime and encountered an officer not far from where the murder weapon was recovered. Authorities have not provided a timetable of the encounter as of this report.
“If it doesn’t line up in a way that makes sense, it could definitely be bad for them,” Lazaro told Fox News in reference to the encounter.
Robinson allegedly told the officer that he returned to get something that he left near a parking garage in the area, which was not far from where investigators recovered the rifle. This was not immediately viewed as suspicious as thousands of people had left items behind on the campus when they fled following the gunfire..
But the officer did a routine check on Robinson’s license plate, which authorities linked to the encounter after he had been identified as a potential suspect, a law enforcement source told the outlet. If the officer’s bodycam was not on, it could provide an opening for Robinson’s defense, Lazaro said.
Additional details about Robinson’s messages could provide problems for Robinson’s defense, however. “A lot of times, what you can get when you subpoena cellphone records are where messages were sent from,” she said.
If the subpoenas show that Robinson’s messages were sent from Orem, Utah and received by his partner in St. George, that would align with the prosecution’s allegations. “The defense is going to want to get, going to wanna see, and probably spend a lot of time, whether they get their own forensic expert to analyze it or do it themselves, to really piece together a timeline,” Lazaro added.
Robinson’s roommate and partner, 22-year-old Lance Twiggs, has been cooperating with prosecutors. The defense is likely to pull out all the stops in seeking to undermine the state’s case, Lazaro noted.
“It could come out that those aren’t as damaging as they sound,” she said. “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.”
The veteran attorney also addressed gaps in what prosecutors have revealed to the public and what remains closed doors, which have spawned several conspiracy theories about the case. “There are some conspiracy theories about…somebody else wrote the text messages or something was planted,” Lazaro said. “As a defense attorney, unless you absolutely know and can prove that something like that happened, that’s not the greatest defense, right? I think you tend to lose credibility unless you really can substantiate it.”
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.
Robinson has not yet entered a plea. His next hearing is scheduled for October 30 in Provo, though there is a strong chance the hearing could be delayed again.
