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Utah prosecutors are accusing Tyler Robinson’s defense team of misleading the public in court filings before attempting to have authorities sanctioned for trying to “set the record straight.”
In an ironic twist, prosecutors also noted the defense’s claim had gone viral after being picked up in the media.
Robinson’s lawyers have previously complained coverage of the case put his right to a fair trial at risk and have a pending motion to have news cameras barred from future court proceedings.
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Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard’s motion came in response to a defense push to have prosecutors sanctioned for speaking on the issue outside of the courtroom.
He argued that prosecutors have done nothing wrong because while court rules, like Utah Rule of Professional Conduct 3.6(c), and a gag order limit what can be said about the case, they allow attorneys on both sides to “set the record straight.”
Read the filing:
Robinson’s defense lawyers, in a court filing, asserted that “the ATF was unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson.”
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The claim, which Ballard described as misleading and “misstated,” generated millions of views from just one report — and inspired additional coverage in local and national media, the prosecutor wrote.
It also fanned the flames of unverified claims that other people could have been responsible for Kirk’s murder.
But the defense left out a crucial piece of context, according to Ballard.
“The ATF was unable to identify or exclude the bullet as having been fired from the rifle,” he wrote, emphasizing the missing information in italics.
“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.
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In response, members of the prosecution team attempted to provide more context in public interviews, explaining the ATF’s conclusions while noting the defendant was innocent until proven guilty, Ballard wrote.
Judge Tony Graf Jr. eventually unsealed the ATF report in order to give the public direct access to the source material.
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Ballard asked the judge to deny the defense motion and their request to have prosecutors turn over internal communications, which he argued are privileged work products.
If the prosecution’s public statements are the issue, the defense already has them, he noted.
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An appendix to the ATF report explained that “inconclusive” findings mean that it was “an examiner’s opinion that there is an insufficient quality and/or quantity of individual characteristics to identify or exclude.”
Experts have told Fox News Digital that it’s not unusual for a bullet to disintegrate on impact, making ballistic identification unlikely.
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However, prosecutors have recovered a spent casing that is both consistent with the bullet and the alleged murder weapon.
Shortly before Kirk’s assassination, Robinson allegedly climbed to a rooftop across the courtyard from where Kirk was speaking and fired a single shot from his grandfather’s Mauser rifle.
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Gruesome video shows the bullet struck Kirk in the neck in front of a crowd of roughly 3,000 people. He died from the injury.
Prosecutors have said campus police found marks left behind on the gravel rooftop moments after the shooting “consistent with a sniper having lain [there] — impressions in the gravel potentially left by the elbows, knees and feet of a person in a prone shooting position.”
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Police recovered the rifle wrapped in a blanket in a patch of woods near campus. And prosecutors have said that text messages between Robinson and his romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, allegedly discuss wanting to retrieve the rifle.
“Stuck in Orem for a little while longer yet,” Robinson allegedly wrote in the hours after the murder. “Shouldn’t be long until I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still.”
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Twiggs is cooperating with investigators and has not been charged with a crime.
Robinson could face the death penalty if convicted of the top charge against him, aggravated murder.
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