{"id":891936,"date":"2026-10-23T12:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T12:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/891936\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T12:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T12:24:12","slug":"defense-attorneys-in-charlie-kirks-killing-say-they-need-several-years-to-prepare-for-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/891936\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense attorneys in Charlie Kirk’s killing say they need several years to prepare for trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defense attorneys for the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk<\/a> are suggesting a 2029 trial date because they say it could take them that long to prepare their case.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, said Thursday that the defense’s proposed schedule was \u201cabsurd\u201d and defendant Tyler Robinson was simply trying to delay.<\/p>\n

Utah District Court Judge Tony Graf<\/a> has scheduled a Friday hearing to set a trial date. <\/p>\n

Robinson<\/a> pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder in last year’s killing of Kirk while the ally of President Donald Trump spoke to a crowd of several thousand people at Utah Valley University. The 23-year-old defendant turned himself in<\/a> a day after the shooting, and his lawyers have not offered alternative theories for Kirk\u2019s death. He could be eligible for the death penalty if convicted.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors from Utah County in court filings anticipated a 17-week trial and said they would be ready by October 2027. But rather than hold the proceedings during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, they proposed the trial begin Jan. 31, 2028.<\/p>\n

Erika Kirk\u2019s attorney, Jeffrey Neiman, said the trial should start next October, the earliest date identified by prosecutors.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the Defendants\u2019 proposed schedule, Mr. Kirk\u2019s two children, who were one and three at the time he was murdered, will be six and eight years old by the time the trial concludes,\u201d Neiman wrote. \u201cThey will face the uncertainty of this criminal proceeding longer than they had their father in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Robinson’s attorneys said in court filings this week that they must sift through tens of thousands of files turned over by prosecutors. <\/p>\n

They said they’ll have to conduct extensive investigations into Robinson’s life in search of mitigating factors that could influence his sentence if convicted, and must devote \u201csubstantial time\u201d to issues such as jury selection.<\/p>\n

The defense lawyers said they respected the court’s attempt to set a \u201crealistic trial date.\u201d Yet because it’s a complex death penalty case, trying to predict when it will be ready for trial \u201cis an exercise that, at this time, will necessarily be infected with false precision,\u201d they wrote in a document filed Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defense attorneys for the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk are suggesting a 2029 trial date…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,49204,12,526,94227,451,373904,3,111,138558,452,453,93406,795],"class_list":["post-891936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-charlie-kirk","tag-donald-trump","tag-education","tag-erika-kirk","tag-headlines","tag-jeffrey-neiman","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-tony-graf","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-tyler-robinson","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}