The defendant’s lawyers wanted the entire office dismissed because the deputy attorney general’s daughter had been in the crowd during the shooting.
A judge ruled on Feb. 24 that a Utah deputy attorney general could continue prosecuting the man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk.
Defense attorneys for Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter, had asked the judge in January to disqualify that member of the prosecution team—along with his entire office—after it was revealed that his daughter had been in the crowd when Kirk was killed.
The young woman did not see the shooting, but texted “CHARLIE GOT SHOT” to a family group chat. Robinson’s defense attorneys had argued that the prosecutor’s relationship with someone in the crowd might have influenced his decision to seek the death penalty.
The prosecution said in a court filing in Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Court for Utah County that she did not have “any lasting trauma from the event.”
“In fact, nearly everything [she] knows about the actual homicide is hearsay,” the filing said, adding that any testimony she gave would consist of “generic, uncontested details available from literally thousands of other witnesses.”
Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray had argued in court that the request was meant to delay the trial.
“This is [an] ambush and another stalling tactic,” Gray said.
Kirk, a popular conservative commentator, was killed last September while speaking at the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah. Robinson, 22, faces aggravated murder charges related to the shooting.
Footage from the day of the shooting appears to show Robinson, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, climbing onto a building where the shooting is believed to have originated. He turned himself in after consultation with family members.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
