He sits between his attorneys, his wrists fastened by a chain secured around his waist, staring at the monitor as the prosecution brings up its exhibits. From time to time, Tyler Robinson scribbles a note. The second day of the proceedings allows him little more movement than that. What lies before him is not the trial itself, but its threshold, and the bar that must be cleared is set low. Mark Kouris, a former Salt Lake City prosecutor and judge who now teaches at the University of Utah, puts it bluntly: the standard is extraordinarily low, and the likelihood that the prosecution will fail is practically zero. On Monday, Judge Tony Graf nevertheless pushed back by rejecting an edited surveillance video because certain sections had been enlarged and marked with circles without establishing the proper evidentiary foundation. The prosecution announced it would try again on Tuesday, this time without the added enhancements.
By afternoon, the courtroom fills with those whose lives are tied to this case. Matt and Amber Robinson, the defendant's parents, enter the building, followed by Kathryn and Robert Kirk, the parents of the victim, and Erika Kirk, his widow. Judge Graf reads the courtroom rules, calling for an environment that remains safe and respectful toward every participant, and because the room is warm, he tells everyone they are free to drink from their water bottles. The courtesy of a gracious host inside a room where a homicide allegation is being examined.
Read also our investigations: Charlie Kirk Murder Trial: Day 1 - When Parents Turn In Their Own Son, the Provo Hearing, and the Weight of the Evidence
The boy who had everything and still lost his future - An investigative reconstruction
The Distorted Truths About Tyler Robinson and Messages From Hell
On the fourth floor, someone has covered the windows overnight with black plastic sheeting. They had been uncovered on Monday. More than a century ago, Georg Simmel wrote that concealment never diminishes what is hidden, but enlarges it, that every secret increases the value of whatever it withholds. The covered windows do exactly that. They are meant to shield the courtroom, yet instead transform it into a sanctuary that can be entered only through fourteen public seats.
David Hull, formerly the lead investigator with the state's investigative bureau, takes the witness stand. Deputy District Attorney David Sturgill guides him through the video that failed the previous day and has now been properly authenticated. The defense, represented by Michael Burt, wants the public kept from seeing it. Reporting on the footage, he argues, would poison the future jury pool and violate Robinson's rights. David Reymann, representing the news organizations, argues the opposite. Those present, he says, have the right to see what the court sees if they are to understand the court's decisions. Judge Graf weighs the arguments and admits the video. He concludes that it differs from the three recordings of the shooting that were introduced the previous day.
Hull speaks as the footage plays. It shows Robinson on September 10 driving into a parking garage, leaving, returning, and leaving again, carrying a backpack, buying a meal at Chick-fil-A, and later no longer carrying the backpack. Shortly after 11:00 a.m., he leaves the area a second time. He returns wearing different clothing, Hull says, and walks with a limp, one leg held almost completely straight. He is seen in front of the Losee Building, then at the point where the roof can be accessed. On Monday, former university police officer Chris Bagley testified about a sniper's shooting rest found in the gravel there. Now a figure climbs onto the roof, walks across it, lies down in the corner, climbs back down, and walks away carrying something in his hand. The timestamp reads 12:44 p.m. Hull adds that a vehicle belonging to Robinson is visible. An officer from Spanish Fork, he says, identified the registered owner through a partial license plate on September 11 and recognized the driver as someone he believed to be Robinson.
A second version follows, marked with circles and enlarged sections intended to direct the viewer's attention. Kathryn Nester, also representing the defense, objects. She argues that its authenticity is questionable and that its effect unfairly prejudices her client. Judge Graf admits this version as well, but reviews it privately without showing it to the public or the press because it consists of the same underlying footage. Once again there is a curtain, the same Simmelian impulse. What the judge alone is permitted to see carries greater weight than what remains open to everyone else.
After a short recess, Nester begins her cross-examination of Hull. On the day of the shooting, he arrived on campus at approximately 1:30 p.m., after Kirk had already been taken to the hospital, and did not learn until around 2:30 that he would be leading the investigation. The amphitheater had been sealed off and secured as thoroughly as possible, despite the large number of people present. A cartridge recovered at the scene, he explains, was later traced to an officer who had unloaded his weapon and ejected an unfired round. Another firearm had also been found, a pistol inside a backpack. Nester asks about the figure on the roof, and Hull acknowledges that the surveillance footage reveals no identifiable facial features. Witnesses who had recorded the scene themselves believed the individual to be an officer lying in position to provide cover from above. The person remained motionless for between fifteen and thirty seconds. Hull also states that he was not present for the autopsy itself but interviewed the medical examiner afterward, and that he did not personally package or ship the rifle. As for the doorbell camera footage discussed the previous day, the homeowner believed the individual shown to be bald and reported seeing three people inside the vehicle, while testimony in court described Robinson's vehicle and only a single person getting out. During redirect examination, however, the prosecution emphasizes that Hull observed Robinson entering a wooded area twice, the same location where a rifle was later recovered.
What follows is a dispute that reaches beyond every strand of genetic material. McBride seeks to admit a notarized, self-authenticating declaration from Turning Point USA board member David Englehardt. Richard Novak, for the defense, questions both its authenticity and its relevance. The document concerns a sentencing enhancement based on victim selection, an increase in punishment permitted under Utah law if the defendant chose the victim because of the victim's perceived political speech. But Englehardt's declaration, Novak argues, deals only with what exists inside Englehardt's own mind, and the biblical passages it contains offer the court no assistance in deciding the issue before it. McBride responds that the document explains what Kirk's organization does and speaks directly to motive. Kirk encouraged people to engage in discussions about faith and politics and urged them to embrace particular values. Judge Graf admits the declaration provisionally. It bears on Kirk's political expression, he says, and the prosecution alleges that Robinson targeted Kirk because of his beliefs and the political speech connected to them. Where politics ends and religion begins is a separate question. The document also contains information about Turning Point USA's tax status and organizational practices. The court will ultimately judge a man, but before doing so it must first determine whether the words of the deceased were political speech or religious conviction, as though one could neatly separate the two, and both from whatever was taking place inside the mind of a young man.
By lunchtime the courtroom empties, and what truly fills it comes into view. Denae Branch, who had stood in line since midnight to secure one of the fourteen public seats, broke down in tears, and Erika Kirk reached across the row to hand her a tissue without knowing whether she was friend or stranger. "She didn't know whether I supported her," Branch says, "and she still showed me love." Kirk's widow cried quietly and played with the bracelet on her wrist. Branch and Jean Rivera wore clothing bearing the word Freedom from Kirk's podcast. Both had been in the audience when the shots were fired, and Rivera had hoped to hear something about Robinson's alleged manifesto. It no longer sounds like an audience. It sounds like a congregation, and the courtroom behind the black plastic has become its sanctuary.
After the recess, Sergeant Jennifer Faumuina, then with the state investigative bureau, describes how a bolt-action rifle wrapped in a dark towel was discovered in the wooded area near campus and, after being photographed, documented, and packaged, was transferred through the FBI to a laboratory operated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A screwdriver recovered from the roof of the Losee Building was added to the evidence. DNA found on the towel points to two individuals, one of them Robinson's roommate.
At the request of the defense, Amanda Bakker, an FBI DNA analyst called by Michael Burt, is allowed to testify out of order while Faumuina will later return to the stand. Robinson, she says, cannot be excluded as a possible contributor to the DNA found on both the screwdriver and the towel, and she informed local investigators of that conclusion on September 13. Department of Justice policy prohibits her from using phrases such as absolute identification or reasonable scientific certainty, and she may not create the impression that DNA analysis is infallible. It is a remarkable statement in a courtroom longing for certainty. Science, summoned as the strongest witness of all, forbids itself the language of absolute certainty. A DNA profile, Bakker explains, does not prove that the individual actually touched the object. Mixed samples from multiple contributors are common, the age of a DNA trace cannot be determined, and all DNA degrades over time. That degradation was measurable on the screwdriver recovered from the location where the shooter is believed to have been positioned.
Burt questions her about the software and its degree of accuracy. Both samples, he points out, contained minor contributors below twenty percent, and one study concluded that interpretation becomes less reliable at such low levels. Bakker acknowledges that finding but responds that only two contributors were ultimately identified, making the analysis more dependable. McBride objects to the entire line of questioning. At a preliminary hearing, where the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the State, he argues, this does not belong. Burt insists that the judge must still assess the reliability of the methodology, particularly because Bakker initially believed there were three contributors. Judge Graf instructs him to wrap up the issue. Before the afternoon recess, the question of how three contributors became two is clarified. The initial analysis suggested at least two, possibly three individuals. Only after Robinson's roommate provided a comparison sample was the calculation rerun and all of the DNA attributed to two people. A third contributor who never truly existed disappears from the record, just as the figure on the roof never revealed a face.
After the recess, Bakker returns to the witness stand, and the courtroom once again fills with the faithful. Julie Eastman of Draper had lined up at four o'clock that morning, was sixth in line, and sat directly in front of Robinson's parents and Kirk's widow, who, she says, cried during the proceedings. Security was everywhere, Eastman recalls, armed personnel at every turn, and Donald Trump Jr. was also in the courtroom, surrounded by Secret Service agents. She says she still cannot believe Kirk is gone and that she still loves him. Trump Jr. himself posts online that Kirk had been one of his closest friends for more than a decade and that he wanted to see the actual evidence before commenting publicly. The statement presents itself as restraint while accomplishing the opposite. The President's son sits inside the courtroom, flanked by armed security, and transforms a preliminary hearing into a declaration of belief before the first juror has even been selected.
During cross-examination, McBride has the analyst describe her credentials: an accredited laboratory, trained examiners, the required academic degree together with specialized training and recurring proficiency testing, all subject to oversight by an independent authority. The degradation found in the samples, she explains, is entirely routine and did not affect the reliability of her conclusions. She followed established protocols and her training throughout. It is the institution taking the stand to testify to its own reliability, and no one asks whether an institution that certifies itself has therefore been truly tested.
Judge Graf announces that the proceedings will resume at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, and the courtroom empties. Robinson's parents leave the building, a security officer stops traffic for them, and the private security teams clear the area. What remains is the black plastic covering the fourth-floor windows, the curtain of a shrine where two thresholds confront one another: the low one this case will cross with ease, and the high one, forever out of reach, where certainty retreats the moment someone dares to call it by name. Simmel knew that a curtain ennobles whatever it conceals. In Provo, it ennobles a proceeding that hides its own uncertainty behind sheets of black plastic while allowing those waiting outside to believe that the verdict already lies beyond them.
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