Utah v. Tyler Robinson

This is a pending case. No trial has occurred. Tyler Robinson is presumed innocent of every charge, and your task is not to judge a man but to forecast what twelve jurors will do when they retire.

On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, 31, the conservative activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was speaking at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem. It was the first stop of a campus tour. Roughly 3,000 people were present. He was struck once by gunfire and died that day.

Tyler Robinson, then 22, was taken into custody about a day and a half later. Prosecutors filed charges in September 2025. There are seven counts as reported: aggravated murder; felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury; two counts of obstruction of justice; two counts of witness tampering; and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child. Of the child this page says nothing more, by rule. Utah prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty. The penalty question belongs to a separate phase and is not part of this forecast.

At a preliminary hearing that began in July 2026 and concluded with closing arguments on September 1, 2026, the State presented its case. Prosecutors offered footage the State describes as enhanced, showing a figure the State says is the shooter lying on the roof of the Losee Center, then rising, running, jumping from the roof, and fleeing. They offered a bolt-action hunting rifle recovered from a wooded area near campus, and ammunition the State described as engraved with internet memes and slogans. Federal analysts testified that DNA analysis supported including Robinson as a contributor on the rifle. The State put in a note it says Robinson left for his roommate, stating in substance that he had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and was going to take it. The State attributed to Robinson text messages saying he had had enough of Kirk's hatred. In a recorded interview, the roommate told investigators that Robinson confessed and said he wished he had not done it. The witness-tampering count rests on messages the State says asked that evidence be deleted.

The defense contested the case at every turn. Counsel cross-examined the federal analysts vigorously, drawing acknowledgments about the limits of what a DNA inclusion can establish regarding when or how contact occurred. Counsel objected on hearsay grounds. Counsel argued that pretrial publicity threatens the right to a fair trial. Robinson has pleaded not guilty as reported and did not testify at the hearing. The defense has not yet presented its trial case. Nothing you have read is the defense case. That case is still to come.

On September 2, 2026, Fourth District Judge Tony Graf found probable cause and bound the case over for trial. Understand what that means and what it does not. Probable cause asks only whether there is enough to proceed. A conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, from twelve jurors, unanimously. The gap between those two standards is the whole distance of a trial. Cases are bound over and then lost. No trial date appears in the sources.

Exclusion instruction: the killing produced enormous national reaction and political argument. None of that was evidence at the hearing. None of it belongs in your forecast. Set it down.

The forecast question: will the trial jury return Guilty of Aggravated Murder, or Not Guilty?

We ask you to forecast conviction, and we ask you to do it on the strength of what the State put on the record in July.

Juries convict when the pieces converge. Here they do. There is footage of a figure on the Losee Center roof, rising and running and jumping and fleeing. There is a bolt-action rifle in the woods near campus. There is testimony from federal analysts that DNA supported including this defendant as a contributor to that rifle. There is a note the State says he wrote before the shooting, announcing the opportunity and the intent to take it. There are messages the State attributes to him about having had enough. And there is a recorded interview in which his roommate told investigators he confessed, and said he wished he had not done it.

A judge has already found the showing sufficient to proceed. Jurors are not lawyers, but they recognize a confession corroborated by physical evidence. We forecast Guilty.

We ask you to forecast acquittal, and we ask you to remember that you have heard exactly half a case.

Probable cause is a screening standard. It asks whether the State may proceed. Every item you have read arrived unopposed by a defense case, because the defense has not yet put one on. What our cross-examination did establish matters. Federal analysts conceded that a DNA inclusion cannot tell you when contact occurred, or how, or in what circumstances. An inclusion is not an identification of a shooter.

The note, the texts, the confession: each comes to you filtered through the State's characterization, and one of them through a witness who lived with him and whose account cross-examination has not yet tested. Counsel objected on hearsay grounds for a reason. Counsel raised pretrial publicity for a reason.

Twelve strangers must agree, unanimously, beyond a reasonable doubt. One doubt is enough. We forecast Not Guilty.

This forecast resolves on the trial jury's verdict on the aggravated murder count in Utah v. Tyler Robinson, as returned and read in open court.

• Guilty of Aggravated Murder resolves YES if the trial jury convicts on the aggravated murder count.
• Not Guilty resolves NO if the trial jury acquits on the aggravated murder count. Conviction of a lesser included offense after acquittal on the aggravated count is an acquittal on that count and resolves NO.
• VOID, excluded from the accuracy ledger and marked void on this page: a hung jury on the aggravated murder count that is not retried to a jury verdict on that count, whatever happens on lesser counts; a guilty plea; a dismissal; a verdict by the court rather than a jury (bench trial or jury waiver); or any other path that never produces a jury verdict on that count.
• Post-verdict events do not rescore. A later new trial order, judgment of acquittal, or appellate reversal does not change the resolution; it will be noted on this page as context.

The seal. Voting freezes and the tally is hashed when the Associated Press or Reuters reports that jury deliberations have begun. If that report is missed, the official tally is reconstructed from the immutable timestamps on every vote, as they stood at the first wire report that deliberations were under way, and hashed then. The reconstruction uses those timestamps and nothing else. The committed string takes the form caseId|freezeInstantISO8601|guiltyCount|notGuiltyCount|totalJurors; its SHA-256 digest publishes on this page at the freeze, and the plaintext string publishes at resolution so anyone can verify the hash.

Any AI panel on this page is a labeled simulation, displayed apart from the human tally and never added to it. The penalty phase is a separate proceeding and is not forecast here. This page forecasts a jury; it does not judge the defendant, who is presumed innocent.