On Monday, we went through the prosecution s case and evidence against Tyler Robinson, the accused murderer of Charlie Kirk. But today, we have a criminal defense attorney, his name is Robert Govea, and he is here to talk about the defense's case and what evidence they will present, the theories and the counter arguments that will be brought forth by their side in trial, and then how the prosecution's evidence stacks up against that. This is a super insightful conversation from an attorney s perspective, and I learned a lot. You will too.
00:05:09.860We had some cross-examination from the defense.
00:05:12.780And really, many people are commenting that this could have been something
00:05:15.200that was handled in a day, even a couple of hours, you could just have a couple of the bits
00:05:21.100of evidence come in to say that we've set and met the standard, that there is probable cause,
00:05:26.240we'll bind this thing over and then advance towards a trial. But what we got instead was
00:05:31.440a bunch of evidence, a bunch of video, a very intense five days. And of course, a lot of people
00:05:36.660debating what came out of this, what the evidence showed or what it didn't show. And now I think
00:05:44.300You know, the question remains what comes next only in this process, because we still have a lot of time until this judge is going to make a decision on this.
00:05:51.740We've got briefings scheduled and then we're not back until September.
00:05:54.740And then really the case starts in full.
00:05:57.740Then we're going to be working our way towards the full trial, which could still be another year or two, maybe longer out.
00:06:04.020Right. So the strange thing, I think, just to the public, people who aren't as familiar with these legal proceedings, is this preliminary hearing, like you said, maybe not entirely unprecedented.
00:06:14.300This is apparently how Utah does things.
00:06:17.580But in my memory, I don't remember this drawn out televised preliminary hearing in the past
00:12:24.600I think in most indictments, most probable cause determination hearings, unless there's
00:12:30.140something very abnormal or something very problematic, like massive tainting of evidence
00:12:35.820or some major ethical conflict or something, it gets bound over. And the reason for that is
00:12:40.860because it's just such a low standard. We're not at beyond a reasonable doubt. We're not even at
00:12:45.520clear and convincing evidence, which are these kind of gradations of criminality or liability
00:12:51.400in our law. It's such a low standard. It's just, is there a reasonable belief that there was a
00:12:56.500crime committed? That's obvious. Charlie's dead. And is there a reasonable belief that this person,
00:13:01.380Tyler Robinson, did it? And if you start to go through the evidence, I agree with you. I think
00:13:04.960that there was a lot presented. And even past this point, the defense is going to have to
00:13:09.960really come up with some alternative theories on how to explain a lot of the evidence that
00:13:14.160was presented, whether it's the DNA evidence, the ballistics, the confessions. Tyler Robinson made
00:13:19.780multiple admissions slash confessions in the process. We had Lance Twiggs, his boyfriend,
00:13:25.220testify that he saw a bunch of these things happen in real time. So they'll have their
00:13:30.080work cut out for them. But I do think that the judge is being very careful about this.
00:13:34.980And so we'll hear briefings on this. He's actually ordered both sides to process the
00:13:40.120last five days and write their main arguments into two competing briefs. And then we come
00:13:44.840back in September for oral argument on it. And that's all pretty usual in Utah. And I
00:13:49.780know a lot of people were upset about that. Even I was thinking, we're waiting till September
00:13:53.800on this thing that's just going to enable more people to fill in the gaps and to contemplate
00:13:59.040over what's happening. But then both sides will present their evidence. The judge will make the
00:14:03.420decision. And I'm, you know, 99.99% certain he's going to bind it over because there wasn't anything
00:14:10.700that the defense presented and they didn't present a lot. They were just kind of responding to the
00:14:15.880prosecution's main case in chief that would wreck or shatter the prosecution. And so if the judge
00:14:21.340is weighing the same evidence that we saw appropriately. I think he's really going to
00:14:24.900have no decision other than to bind it over. In this case, we'll get back on path for trial.
00:14:30.100Yeah. You know, one thing I saw people speculate or people say online is that the reason why this
00:14:36.880preliminary hearing took as long as it did is because the defense was pushing back so hard
00:14:42.280against the publication or against the release of some of the evidence that the prosecution was
00:14:48.700bringing forth so my question for you especially with your particular background is twofold
00:14:53.500one do you think that's true do you think that the defense's strategy there did lengthen this
00:14:59.140preliminary hearing and two what you think about the defense's strategy overall last week
00:15:05.000the defense is doing a very solid job from my perspective and they've been fighting tooth and
00:15:12.080nail throughout this entire case not only at the preliminary hearing but even before we got here
00:15:17.940They were filing motions right at the outset to keep the media out, to keep audio recordings out, to really lock this trial down, probably in part because they know that a lot of the evidence is going to be just damning facially, that if you can see the text messages, if you can see or hear from Lance Twiggs, the boyfriend, and hear his admissions, people are going to start to fill in those gaps with the belief that Tyler Robinson ultimately did this.
00:15:44.220So they did not want any of that to become public and be a part of the public record, wanted to litigate a lot of this behind closed doors. And that went on for months. I mean, they fought. They're even appealing a lot of this stuff to the Utah Supreme Court to say that it's a violation of Tyler Robinson's due process rights, that if you enable the public to see all these things or if you enable hearsay at a preliminary hearing, which is essentially in the rules, that you're going to be jeopardizing his rights.
00:16:10.920And so they've been starting at the outset in a very, very adversarial position. And then that's not to mention the other strategies that they've deployed. They said that one of the prosecutors had a child who was actually there at the event when Charlie Kirk was killed, and that that warranted a disqualification of the entire prosecutor's office. And we litigated that for a long time.
00:16:34.400So people will also ask, why did the preliminary hearing just happen now? We're now in July. Charlie was killed back in September. Why did it take so long? And it's because the defense has been doing this from the very beginning. So they tried to disqualify the entire prosecutor's office by saying that the entire case was biased and prejudiced because one of the main prosecutors had a child at the event.
00:16:55.040And so therefore, he's not looking at this at a neutral or, you know, unbiased perspective.
00:17:01.200He's actually waging war against Tyler Robinson in order to vindicate his child and what the
00:17:17.640But then there was another back and forth that the defense jumped all over.
00:17:22.260We saw that there was that report in the Daily Mail, I think is where it started.
00:17:26.460And then it spread across the Internet like wildfire, where they shared the headline that the bullet of Tyler Robinson's gun did not match the rifle.
00:17:35.640And that was because they got a ballistics report, you know, some a forensic exam that came back from, I believe, the ATF.
00:17:43.240And it didn't exactly say that. It said that the match was inconclusive.
00:17:47.380So they couldn't connect it back to the rifle. They couldn't disqualify it from the rifle.
00:17:51.700when a bullet enters a person or hits a target it is in mushrooms many people have seen these
00:17:57.680photos may have even seen the photograph in the tyler robinson case but it becomes very difficult
00:18:03.840to match when the bullet gets so perverted and contorted kind of blossoms like into a flower
00:18:08.620and then you can't match the etchings on the outer jacket of the bullet as it goes through
00:18:14.480the rifle barrel and so this report hit the media and everybody was sharing it like wildfire it's
00:18:19.900the gun doesn't match the bullet. So therefore, Tyler Robinson is excluded as the suspect who
00:18:25.680shot Charlie. Of course, that's not what it said. It just said it was inconclusive. We couldn't
00:18:30.200exclude it. We couldn't include it. And so the prosecution then, they went out and they started
00:18:35.240to correct the record. They were also going to the media, I think TMZ and other people and
00:18:40.120explaining that's not what the report said. This is what it actually said. And so then the defense
00:18:44.660latched onto that as well. They said, oh, now you are violating a court order. Now, prosecution,
00:18:51.040you have breached something that the court ordered you to do. And that's a procedural problem
00:18:56.680and an error. And so they made the argument that there should be sanctions for that. And they
00:19:00.660ultimately were sanctioned. But the defense is trying to engineer these procedural exploits,
00:19:07.440essentially, to say that if the prosecution does something bad, or if there's a bad evidentiary
00:19:11.760ruling or if evidence is admitted that should be excluded, that they can then use that as
00:19:16.700an argument to help their client, which is standard operating procedure in criminal defense
00:19:21.180law and very aggressive and good tactic if you're representing your client well.
00:19:26.400And they, in this case, when that all happened, they wanted the prosecution to be sanctioned
00:19:30.380and they wanted really the death penalty to be taken off of the table.
00:19:34.160So you can see it by waiting for a mistake to happen and by exploiting that, you can
00:19:39.200then come back and make some major claims that are going to benefit your client. And we saw a lot of
00:19:43.920that happen in the preliminary hearing. We saw that there was a note that leaked out. The handwritten
00:19:49.820Tyler Robinson note was actually something that shouldn't have been published. It was published.
00:19:55.480And then after that happened, the defense came out and they said, we want all the cameras turned
00:19:59.500off now. We want all the audio to be turned off now and revert back to that original demand that
00:20:04.600they had at the very outset of the case, which is to lock everything down. So by, you know,
00:20:09.500kind of being obnoxious and by being very aggressive, they're trying to engineer a
00:20:13.060tactical win for their client. And that's just good lawyering. Yeah. So they're basically
00:20:18.960centering their side on we're protecting his due process rights and trying to ensure that this is
00:20:25.120a fair, impartial process for him, which of course, all of us who believe I'm talking about,
00:20:32.060myself and a lot of people out there who believe that Tyler Robinson is the guy. Of course, we
00:20:37.340want him to see justice. And it's hard, I think, for some people to think, well, how could you
00:20:42.980defend someone like this? But we want there to be attorneys who will defend the due process
00:20:47.920rights of the accused. That's good news for all of us. As you've said multiple times, that is part
00:20:52.800of our system. But so far, the defense has focused on that, right? They haven't, at least so far,
00:20:59.100said, hey, like, we don't think that Tyler Robinson is the guy. We don't think our client
00:21:04.920committed this. I don't even know if that would be appropriate at this point, but it seems like
00:21:08.720it's more procedural in their argumentation rather than trying to prove his innocence, correct?
00:21:17.420Yeah, that's right. We haven't seen their full thesis or theory of the case come out yet. And
00:21:22.800there's a couple of different ways that you can approach, of course, a criminal defense case.
00:21:26.880One is to make the argument that he's factually innocent, that he is not the shooter. He was not on the roof. He was not there that day. He has an alibi. He was at work or he was at somebody else's house. You know, the DNA matches are all just a coincidence. You know, it was his gun, maybe, but somebody else took it. He was a patsy. There was a body double, all of these things, exploding microphone and so on and so forth.
00:21:50.780They haven't made those arguments as far as we've seen yet. And even as to some of the other main components of the evidence presented against Tyler Robinson, like his confessions and the text messages between him and Lance Twiggs or the discord messages or the even the testimony that was provided by it wasn't testimony at the time, but it was testimony provided by Lance Twiggs about the conversation with Tyler Robinson.
00:22:14.200A lot of that hasn't been rebutted yet. And it doesn't really need to be rebutted at this time.
00:22:20.820They can save these arguments for later down the line when the trial comes out. They will
00:22:26.080certainly do that. But I think we can read into the fact that they didn't cross-examine some of
00:22:31.880these main points as evidence that they don't have a lot to cross-examine on. And so one example of
00:22:37.200this would be the text messages. The idea was that Tyler Robinson confessed essentially to his
00:22:44.860boyfriend Lance Twiggs over text message, sent text messages, communicated inside those text
00:22:50.980messages, a lot of non-public information about stashing the rifle in the woods, about waiting
00:22:57.480to make sure that a police officer was not there so he could go retrieve the rifle. He was also
00:23:02.960talking about the rifle being covered in a towel that had a bunch of DNA all over it. So these
00:23:08.400things were not public and he was communicating those back to Lance Twiggs. Lance Twiggs also
00:23:13.880testified at the preliminary hearing and confirmed all of that. If the defense had strong evidence
00:23:21.640that would rebut that, if they could exonerate their client or at least smash that component
00:23:26.900of the testimony, I think that that would have created a bunch of doubt, even at this early
00:23:32.260stage that would have made the judge question the case a little bit more. So for example,
00:23:36.200if they would say, we got the cell phone extraction records, we got actually the GPS
00:23:41.940location data, and we could show you that Tyler Robinson was not at that location because we know
00:23:48.960that the prosecution and law enforcement, they executed search warrants for everything. And this
00:23:54.120is what I meant when I was saying that there will be a lot more evidence that comes out, but they've
00:23:58.940got everything. As far as I can tell, they've got location data, GPS data, all of the individual
00:24:05.000device identification numbers, everything that happened on these devices, including on the
00:24:11.360vehicle, Lance's phones, Tyler's phone, the Discord servers, all of the cell services,
00:24:17.880all were just gobbled up. And so that should have been, and I believe it was, already provided over
00:24:24.460to the defense. So if there was something in there that was exculpatory, I would imagine they
00:24:29.320would bring that up and use that because it would be damning for that piece of evidence and that
00:24:34.060pillar that they're using. But they just simply didn't do that. One theory would be that maybe
00:24:38.380Lance Twiggs was the person actually sending the text messages. So he's got both phones,
00:24:44.500he's sending messages to himself, and he's having this fake conversation. So I think if there was
00:24:48.400something there there that that would have already been introduced, otherwise it wasn't. And
00:24:54.060doesn't mean that it doesn't come out at a later point in time, right? They might have an expert
00:24:58.640witness who comes out when trial starts and can offer an alternative explanation for these things.
00:25:05.100But because they haven't done those things, those are substantive explanations of the evidence.
00:25:10.400And it would take a bit of evidence that has been admitted and just give it a better explanation.
00:25:16.020But they didn't really do that. And the only other really big thing that they did was trying
00:25:21.320to undermine the validity of the evidence. So to your original point, they've been trying to
00:25:26.640preclude evidence. They don't want stuff to come in, or at least don't want it to come out into
00:25:30.580the public arena. But they can also try to explain it away or undermine the validity of it. And we
00:25:35.600saw some of that with the DNA evidence, where when the examiner was explaining that Tyler Robinson
00:25:42.300was a major contributor on a lot of things, multiple areas of the gun, the screwdriver that
00:25:48.280was found on the roof, the towel that was enveloping the gun on the actual bullet casings
00:25:53.520that were found both in the woods and back at his home. They weren't really trying to deny that.
00:26:02.100They were just trying to undermine the validity of DNA evidence, right? It's a science. In science,
00:26:07.400nothing's perfect. There is a margin of error in all of this testing. And so they were hammering
00:26:12.380the witness about that, right? It's not a hundred percent, right? And these things could be problems
00:26:16.000where they convolute and you've got multiple samples coming out at the same time such that
00:26:20.740you can't get a good read on these things. It was more trying to basically attack the validity of
00:26:26.640that evidence rather than saying it's not accurate, that the DNA is not there. Kind of acknowledging
00:26:32.340that it's there, but maybe it's not to the same levels or to the sufficiency that the prosecution
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00:27:56.600I would think that would be more of a tactic for a jury
00:27:59.560than a tactic for a judge because the judge understands how dna evidence works too but i
00:28:04.780could see that kind of language working on a jury that well you just heard this witness it's not 100
00:28:10.180percent that it's this person's dna so how can you convict a person without knowing for sure
00:28:15.000so i think it's interesting that they are already kind of bringing that up right now in the pre-trial
00:28:20.500hearing which kind of leads to my next question is do you think that there's going to be a different
00:28:25.560strategy or different things presented by the prosecution and the defense once they
00:28:30.020actually get to trial? And if so, what do you think those strategies are going to be?
00:28:36.960I do think that the prosecution is very likely just going to double down and triple down on
00:28:43.300the evidence that they've already presented. And so we started to see a little bit of a snippet
00:28:48.160of that at the tail end of day five on the preliminary hearing. We had a bunch of video
00:28:52.920that was played. And then at the very end, there was apparently this extra video that was played.
00:28:58.100They turned the cameras off in response to a sanction based on the fact that that note leaked.
00:29:04.060So Tyler Robinson wrote, according to the evidence, a handwritten note, put it under his keyboard.
00:29:09.120That was one of the bits of evidence that was an admission. And so he then texted his boyfriend,
00:29:13.980hey, look under the keyboard, opens up the note, pulls the note out, reads it. It's a confession,
00:29:19.420right? This is what I did. This is why I did it. So that bit of evidence shouldn't have hit the
00:29:24.240public yet. And it did. People got a screenshot of it because the camera just happened to be on
00:29:29.500when they pulled up the exhibit. So the judge then essentially sanctioned the prosecution at
00:29:34.780the very end of the hearing. We then saw there were a bunch of people in the courtroom who got
00:29:39.520to see that enhanced version of the video. And there were a bunch of other exhibits that we
00:29:44.180just didn't see. And there were other exhibits that were kind of glossed over. For example,
00:29:48.600in the Lance Twiggs testimony, because it was a preliminary hearing, this was the boyfriend,
00:29:54.100he was allowed to testify in video form without cross-examination because hearsay is admissible
00:30:00.460in a preliminary hearing. This is not a trial. And so that will not be allowed at the trial.
00:30:06.040He's not going to be allowed to just play a video. So they're going to have to bring Lance
00:30:09.140Twiggs back into the courtroom and he'll be subject to cross-examination. And I think it's
00:30:14.460going to be ripe for a lot of very aggressive cross-examination. And so putting on the defense
00:30:19.940hat, Lance Twiggs, if I am with the defense, is going to be one of the main scapegoats of this
00:30:26.900entire trial because seemingly he was pretty complicit in a lot of what was happening. In
00:30:33.120fact, he was almost helping conceal a wanted fugitive, right? Tyler Robinson, according to
00:30:37.520his story, admitted that he did this thing, that he was wanted on the run. And then Lance was
00:30:43.460helping to keep the whole thing a secret, you know, kind of facilitating the escape of a felon
00:30:48.420and covering up and concealing somebody who was a wanted person at the time. So he could have been
00:30:53.240charged with crimes and he wasn't. Instead, he got immunity. And so from the defense perspective,
00:30:58.440I think they're going to really hammer on that. They did not have that opportunity during the
00:31:01.880preliminary hearing because it was just a video testimony. But when he's there in person,
00:31:06.060I think that they're going to try to shred him to bits and to say that everything coming out of
00:31:10.680his mouth is biased. It's prejudiced. It's something that he's saying just to save his own
00:31:15.840skin. In fact, he's much more complicit in this. And there is evidence that his DNA was also on a
00:31:21.300bunch of other items, not to the same degree that Tyler Robinson's was, but they lived together.
00:31:26.560They were in the same house. They were lovers. And so DNA is all over the place. But the idea
00:31:32.100that they're just going to let that part of the testimony stand, I think is not realistic. He's
00:31:37.980going to come in and unless tyler robinson's theory is still somehow to protect lance twigs
00:31:44.140which maybe it is then i think the lance twigs will be the subject of a lot of cross and a lot
00:31:50.780of undermining his credibility to make him more complicit in their theory maybe than tyler
00:31:57.320robinson was maybe that tyler robinson was acting on behalf of lance twigs he was you know under
00:32:01.940duress he was coerced to do this for his boyfriend or something to that effect to mitigate the
00:32:07.160seriousness or at least the aggravators of the murder charge to maybe beat a severe penalty
00:32:14.360when it comes down to sentencing, to make him more complicit than not. And from the defense
00:32:21.060perspective, we haven't really seen a lot of theory. What is the theory of the case? If it's
00:32:26.060not a 30-06 round, what is it? If there's another shooter, who is that other shooter?
00:32:32.520There's other interesting developments. I think in the preliminary hearing that we learned about, there was a gun with a holster in a holster found in the courtyard where Charlie Kirk was shot. There was also a 223 round, I believe, was found on the roof of another building that was accounted for as an officer rechambering his rifle.
00:32:55.100And so it spit out another round on the roof of another building.
00:32:59.740And from the defense perspective, I think that a big part of their argument will be about the absence of evidence making their job essentially impossible, that these other angles were not investigated.
00:33:11.460And because Tyler Robinson turned himself in, what that did is create this chain of events that ultimately led him to being the subject without an investigation into any other possibilities.
00:33:22.460And once he was turning himself in, it then stopped the investigation. And so it didn't give them any evidence to exculpate their client. There was nothing else that they could latch on to related to maybe the other round, maybe related to the other holster.
00:33:38.800Maybe they didn't investigate somebody who looks like Tyler Robinson.
00:33:42.500Many people are saying there's a body double with a different height that was also walking
00:33:55.520As soon as you had your guy, everything came to a skidding halt.
00:33:59.300And so we have no opportunity because of your failed investigation to do our due diligence
00:34:05.740to exonerate our client and try to create some reasonable doubt around that angle.
00:34:12.060Well, but then you've got to pour all of the admissions and the confessions against those
00:34:17.580things. So then you've got Tyler Robinson, who, according to Lance Twiggs, was working on
00:34:25.000engraving bullets with a Dremel in their household a week before at least the shooting actually
00:34:32.120occurred. So you've got testimony that will come out saying that this was a kind of a premeditated
00:34:37.740thing and that Tyler Robinson was involved in it at every step of the way. And then he goes,
00:34:43.680actually commits the shooting. Then immediately after the shooting, makes an admission to Lance
00:34:49.680Twiggs in text message saying, I did it. Look, you know, get the handwritten note. The handwritten
00:34:55.260note is another admission that was at another point in time. Then before he turns himself in,
00:35:00.660Story goes that he sent a message to a discord group of about 20 people with another admission.
00:35:06.640Then you've also got Lance Twig saying that they met each other after the shooting in person and that Tyler Robinson, again, essentially confessed to him saying, I did it and was even sad about it, was even crying and almost remorseful and very nervous, kind of doing a bunch of things around the house in order to keep his mind off it.
00:35:23.160Then you've also got the parents who helped to turn him in. Presumably, we don't know the details about that specific evidence yet, but the parents presumably got another admission. So Tyler Robinson is not being turned in for nothing. He said he had some role in this.
00:35:40.400And so whether or not that evidence all comes out, I think, is yet to be seen. But I would fully expect the prosecution to then layer that on top of all of the other evidence, the DNA evidence, the surveillance evidence. I think that the electronic forensic evidence is going to be extremely compelling because you're going to be able to pinpoint his vehicle, track his phone.
00:36:02.760I think it will rebut the idea that somebody was in the same position, in the same location, texting themselves. Two people, two different locations. And it, I believe, is going to corroborate very closely with where the rifle was found.
00:36:18.500In other words, the cell phone will be on campus. The cell phone will be in the woods. The cell phone will be in a car as he's texting, waiting to go retrieve the rifle. And so there'll be this convergence of evidence from the prosecution side that will be very significant. And the defense will have to go through each one of those and knock them out one by one or have a better explanation saying, you know, maybe Tyler Robinson was drugged in the back of a car or something.
00:36:44.620And somebody else was was moving him around into these locations. But it's going to ultimately come out. We'll see what their theories are. But a lot of that should could and might just be being saved for motions practice and for a trial.
00:36:57.920yeah and just as a reminder to people i always have to remind myself of this when we're looking
00:37:05.300at these trials the defense's job is not to prove tyler innocent and they don't actually
00:37:11.660have to give evidence for alternative theories they don't have to say no we think this guy did
00:37:18.280it and here's here's our case for that guy all they're doing and you can correct me if i'm wrong
00:37:23.220in my wording in this, is trying to present a reasonable doubt. They are trying to tell the
00:37:29.600jury, correct, that there is a reasonable doubt that this person committed this crime and therefore
00:37:35.080they should not be found guilty. It's guilty or not guilty in a court of law. It's not necessarily
00:37:40.000guilty or innocent. And so they just have to put as much doubt against the prosecution as possible
00:37:47.000and against Tyler Robinson being 100% guilty as possible in order to do their jobs well.
00:37:54.080But then you're saying like the prosecution could easily come back and say,
00:38:10.240If he wasn't really the one taking the shot,
00:38:12.280then why would he have you know why would he have confessed on discord why would he have sent these
00:38:18.380text messages and all of that so it's not either like the prosecution doesn't even necessarily have
00:38:24.720to go through all of the defenses theories one by one specifically they just have to be able to say
00:38:30.580it is not reasonable to believe anything the defense is saying in defense of tyler robinson
00:38:36.660is that correct yeah that's exactly right and there's this interesting thing that some judges
00:38:41.840will do during jury selection. I don't expect to see it in this case, but they'll ask a full panel
00:38:47.180of jurors. They'll say, OK, how many people here think that this man who's about to stand trial
00:38:52.360is guilty? Right. And there'll be a portion of jurors who raise their hands right now. He's
00:38:56.340guilty. Cops charged him. He's sitting here in court. So he must have done something wrong.
00:39:00.820And so they'll raise their hand. Then the judge will say, how many of you don't know whether this
00:39:05.460person is innocent or guilty? And, you know, usually a bunch of hands will go up. But that's
00:39:09.800also the wrong answer because the right answer is even at trial, even while he's seated there,
00:39:14.380he is presumed innocent at that very moment. And so the burden of proof resides with the
00:39:20.040prosecution. And that's a little bit different than what we saw with the preliminary hearing.
00:39:24.000At the preliminary hearing that we just went through, the evidence is looked in a light most
00:39:29.300favorable to the prosecutors. So if the judge is receiving this evidence, there's some doubts about
00:39:34.020it. He's going to say, well, this is their interpretation. And because it's at such an
00:39:37.820early stage, we're going to give the government the benefit of the doubt. But once we get into
00:39:42.260the trial, then it's kind of an inverted standard. And it is the beyond a reasonable doubt standard,
00:39:47.340which is a much higher standard. And in practice, the defense, I think, does a better job if they
00:39:55.700do have an alternative theory. They can go through and kind of knock out each one of the government's
00:40:01.220main components. They could say that the DNA evidence is bad. So what if his evidence, the
00:40:07.320DNA is on the screwdriver. So what if it's on the gun? It doesn't make him the shooter. It doesn't
00:40:14.320put him on the rooftop at that time. They could say, we've got all this surveillance footage.
00:40:18.720And so we can see him walking around campus. They'll say, so what? That's not him. It's a
00:40:23.020body double. Look, the heights are wrong. The heights don't match up or it's a different body
00:40:27.960structure or he's got a different gait. Bring in an expert to talk about that. Say that the text
00:40:33.140messages were all spoofed, right? We've got the cell phone records. And so we've got no admission
00:40:38.860on the cell phone records, or he was drugged or something. He was in some sort of diluted state.
00:40:44.120So his in-person admissions to Lance Twiggs were all perverted and something that is unreliable
00:40:50.440and shouldn't be held against him because the government hasn't met their burden on these
00:40:54.100things. And they can go through and just knock, knock, knock, knock, knock out and kind of cut
00:40:58.460the legs out from each pillar that is presented by the government. But largely, I think that the
00:41:03.660defense can do better if they have a theory, if they have a thesis. Like if Tyler Robinson is
00:41:09.180factually innocent, if he is not the shooter, who was the shooter? And does he have an alibi? Like
00:41:15.220where was Tyler Robinson on that day? Was he at work? Was he with his family? We know he wasn't
00:41:20.540at work. We know he wasn't with his family. Lance Twiggs says he wasn't with Lance Twiggs.
00:41:24.700So if the defense is going to come up with an alternative, what is that going to be and who is it going to be? And I think that Lance Twiggs would be the most obvious option that he's being immunized. He's being granted protection from future charges. And it's a quid pro quo, essentially. He's not doing that for free.
00:41:44.540he's getting a protection in order to say certain things. And so you undermine his credibility
00:41:48.960and substitute some of Tyler Robinson's guilt with Lance Twiggs' guilt. And then you create
00:41:55.540doubt about the entire case based on that reframe. And you present that to the jury. So the jury has
00:42:02.620something to latch onto rather than just, we don't have an explanation, but it wasn't our guide.
00:42:08.700So as this advances, I think that we'll start to see what the defense arguments are.
00:42:14.700But I think as the record develops more, we start to see that there are harder things
00:55:31.180Do you think, I've seen this question a lot, that all of the chatter online about this
00:55:36.120makes it really difficult to get a jury that really is impartial, that can kind of come in
00:55:45.540and say, look, I'm just going to see the evidence as it stands and then make my decision based on
00:55:51.140the arguments. I know that's a big concern that maybe the defense has, but a lot of people who
00:55:56.040care about due process have. Yeah, it is a very interesting and I think astute question because
00:56:02.860ordinarily the answer is it shouldn't, you know, know that we shouldn't have a conversation about
00:56:09.320the case ultimately impact the jury. We had, if you remember the George Floyd case where we had
00:56:15.500video of Derek Chauvin, you know, every single day, essentially for months on end with his knee
00:56:21.700on George Floyd. And that resulted in a trial. And the judge said we could validly put together
00:56:28.820a jury. And normally the protections in this process occur in a process called void deer.
00:56:34.160So the judge and the defense and the prosecution will all be asking prospective jurors questions
00:56:39.800about what they've seen, whether they can be fair and impartial. And I guarantee you that it's going
00:56:45.480to be very extensive. Lots of questions from both sides. People will be asking, do you watch
00:56:51.380Turning Point? Are you a Turning Point fan? Did you ever subscribe to Charlie Kirk? Did you ever
00:56:55.520see a Charlie Kirk video? On the other hand, do you watch Candace Owens? Do you watch these other
00:57:00.660commenters about this case? Where are you at politically aligned in this process? And those
00:57:08.300people will very likely be disqualified, I think, on both ends. Anybody who's overly friendly to
00:57:13.200Charlie as a victim will likely go. Anybody who's very questioning about the government's case will
00:57:19.120probably go. And we'll have a lot of unpacking of those issues. Now, that was supposed to
00:57:25.340protect the case in Derek Chauvin, where we were supposed to make sure that we could go through
00:57:30.100that process to whittle out any problematic jurors. But that doesn't always work, honestly.
00:57:36.080The story after Derek Chauvin was convicted was that there was one juror who was not honest or accurate on those forms and didn't actually tell the truth.
00:57:47.320And there was one juror who actually was found after the trial was over to have been at a George Floyd protest, was actually out there on behalf of George Floyd and even had a T-shirt on called, you know, like, get your knee off our necks, like a T-shirt that he was wearing.
00:58:03.700So when he went through the void-deer process, he was asked about all that.
00:58:07.260And he said, I'm, you know, I'm perfectly impartial.
00:58:26.320And we've seen similar patterns in the Galen Maxwell trial.
00:58:29.300There was a juror who was literally in her jury room who was telling other jurors about his victimhood as somebody who was a victim of sexual abuse.
00:58:54.140So a lot of these protections sound really great. And like, you should be able to solve this just by asking people to be honest and truthful and accurate. And it should protect everything. But then you see, you know, they slip through the cracks and you have to ask yourself whether or not that ultimately impacted the final verdict.
00:59:11.220in this case, is the assassination of our time. I mean, it's maybe the most politically volatile
00:59:17.680criminal prosecution that we've ever seen, especially related to the death of somebody
00:59:23.920that everybody knew and had a lot of opinions about. But how do you de-charge that in this
00:59:30.500process? And how do you prevent people from being dishonest or lacking in truth when they're going
00:59:36.080through the process. It's going to be some work for the judge to cut through. Right. Another
00:59:42.960person that could affect the outcome of this case is Erica Kirk, correct? Because Utah has0.96
00:59:49.260victim's rights. Could you talk about what that could look like?
00:59:54.400Yeah, I think victim's rights are, you would say, subordinate to the defendant's rights. So
01:00:01.360the defendant who's currently being prosecuted has the right to due process, has the right
01:00:07.140to have the format unfold in a way that doesn't jeopardize him or the actual finding of innocence
01:00:14.140or guilt. Victims' rights, I would say, will likely come into more play during the plea
01:00:22.560negotiation process or during sentencing. She has a right to be in attendance at these things.
01:00:28.020she has a right to participate in the proceedings and to make her voice known as, you know, the0.86
01:00:33.260victim of a brutal assassination. But more likely than not, you know, we saw this emerge in the
01:00:40.820preliminary hearing. Her defense team was making the argument that certain things should happen a
01:00:45.220certain way. And from my read, the judge was saying, thank you for your input, but we're going
01:00:49.340to go back to the parties who are actually litigating this case. Now, if there is a plea deal,
01:00:54.340So as I mentioned at the outset, Judge Graff said something like, you know, sometimes you have to spend time in order to save time. So now that all of this has been laid bare, if the defense team is seeking or communicating with Tyler Robinson about a plea deal and they say, hey, we'll take a life in prison deal with no parole if you just give us and drop the death penalty, goes back over to the prosecutor.
01:01:20.720The prosecutor will then say, let me talk to the victims about this. The victim will then have an input. So Erica Kirk could say, you know, I'm OK with that outcome or I'm not OK with that outcome. Of course, prosecutions offices are generally not bound by that, but it's a nice kind of courtesy so that the victim is a part of the process in getting justice because ultimately her husband was taken from her.
01:01:44.360So whether a plea deal is contemplated or not, I think we'll see.
01:01:50.540But then, of course, at sentencing, when the judge is now having to flesh out the sentence,
01:01:56.100I think she'll have a big role in that, in talking about the impact and the harm and
01:01:59.720the damage it's caused to her and her family.
01:02:03.000And there was a motion just filed by her and her lawyers saying, we also have a right to0.82