SALT LAKE CITY — Defense attorneys for the Utah man accused of killing Charlie Kirk say prosecutors crossed the line with a willful “media tour” — and now they want a judge to step in and sanction them. But in a new filing, the Utah County Attorney’s Office says they only were correcting the defense’s mischaracterization of bullet evidence, which it argues fueled intense media coverage.
The dispute centers around a report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about the bullet that killed Kirk. Attorneys for Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old Utah man accused of firing the fatal shot, wrote in a motion that the agency was “unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson.”
But prosecutors wrote in a Thursday filing that this was a mischaracterization of the report, which they say states that the bullet jacket fragment “could not be identified or excluded” as having been fired from that rifle.
The defense’s “misleading” description of the ATF report launched a “media frenzy,” Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard wrote, pointing to one headline from the Daily Mail that read, “Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did NOT match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims.”
Fourth District Court Judge Tony Graf has set strict rules to limit trial publicity, including setting limits on what attorneys on the case can say publicly to journalists.
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