SALT LAKE CITY — Utah County prosecutors are seeking enhancements to criminal charges they've filed against Tyler Robinson utilizing a provision of the state's hate crimes law.
"The state is further alleging aggravating factors on counts one and two because the defendant is believed to have targeted Charlie Kirk based on Charlie Kirk’s political expression," Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray announced at a news conference earlier this week.
The law — entitled "Victim Targeting Penalty Enhancements" — includes a provision that makes a person exercising "political expression" a protected class alongside race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity. It was passed in 2019 after decades of attempts to get a hate crimes law through the Utah State Legislature.
Sen. Daniel Thatcher, FWD-West Valley City, sponsored the bill that ultimately passed when he was in the Senate Republican caucus (he is currently serving in the Utah legislature as a member of the Forward Party).
"The idea of executing a man for his political expression is necessarily a terroristic threat against any others who may speak out politically," he said in an interview with FOX 13 News.
For years, a hate crimes law never advanced on Utah's Capitol Hill. Social conservatives largely objected to inclusion of things like sexual orientation and gender identity, but also expressed worries the bill would target people's speech or thoughts. As part of negotiations to get the bill through the Republican supermajority legislature, "political expression" was included in the list of protected categories.
"Initially, the push was to include political beliefs," Sen. Thatcher recalled. "But a belief is not something that can be proven in a court of law, whereas expression can. The opposition was never to the concept of protecting political expression, which was appropriate. It was finding the right legal terminology."
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This may be one of the first times in Utah law that "political expression" is being used in a prosecution. That it is being used in the case against the man accused of killing conservative political activist Charlie Kirk — well known for his outspoken political expression — is not lost on many. Kirk was engaged in an event at Utah Valley University where he was debating people on hot-button issues, sitting under a tent that proclaimed "Prove Me Wrong" when he was shot and killed.
The LGBTQ rights group Equality Utah, which championed the hate crimes law, said Thursday that it supported the inclusion of political expression as part of the negotiations — and still does. The conservative Utah Eagle Forum, which opposed the hate crimes law at the time, said it is supportive of the political expression provision being used to prosecute Charlie Kirk's accused killer.
"We are in full support of the way it is being used and this is what everyone foresaw it being used as," Dani Bordeaux, the vice-chair of the Utah Eagle Forum, told FOX 13 News on Thursday. "Our concerns at the time of it being written and revised, a person using political speech could be considered a crime."
Sen. Thatcher said he believes it is appropriate to apply Utah's hate crimes law in the prosecution of Robinson.
"Because the reason that hate crimes are especially nefarious is because of the terrorism aspect of those crimes," he said.
