Defense attorney Richard Novak says the court has to determine whether there is probable cause — and whether or not Charlie Kirk “was targeted because of his political expressions” from Tyler Robinson’s perspective.
“And I think the question here, really, which the state can’t answer with reasonable inferences from evidence, is there’s no evidence as to really what was in Mr. Robinson’s mind, if in fact he was the shooter, about Charlie Kirk, because we have no testimony that Mr. Robinson had ever spoken about Charlie Kirk, that he’d ever heard anything he’d said,” Novak said.
He said Robinson’s then-roommate and romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, was asked “during his recorded interview whether he’d ever discussed Mr. Kirk with Mr. Robinson. The answer was, ‘No.’”
Novak argued “there is no evidence of Mr. Robinson having heard or seen anything specific from Mr. Kirk, or having expressed anything about Mr. Kirk until the statement, which basically says some hatred can’t be negotiated out. So what is it? Is it political expression? Which political expression?”
Novak said Kirk “spoke hatefully” of certain groups, including those who are gender-nonconforming, “But that doesn’t mean that those personal choices by Mr. Twiggs and by Mr. Robinson equate with the hate that, at least Mr. Robinson says, he had toward Mr. Kirk. So we don’t know what that is. We don’t know.”
“There’s a gap between what it is that Mr. Kirk said and stood for — the phrase in the statute is political expression — and what it is that Mr. Robinson felt about him,” Novak argued. “It’s a significant gap because what it allows the state to do is to make it up! Oh, it must be about this relationship.”
“It must be about this because look at these two young people and the way they live, and that’s an inference without evidence, and it’s a very inflammatory inference,” he continued. “And what makes it even more inflammatory is that the state chose to wrap it in religion.”