A Utah County judicial official has formally scheduled the long-awaited criminal trial for 23-year-old Tyler Robinson, the man facing multiple felony counts including aggravated murder for the 2025 on-campus fatal shooting of high-profile conservative youth organizer Charlie Kirk, to kick off with jury selection on June 21, 2028. Presiding Judge Tony Graf Jr. announced the timeline during a Monday court session, following months of back-and-forth between prosecution, defense counsel, and representatives of the Kirk family over scheduling logistics.
Robinson has entered a formal not guilty plea to the top aggravated murder charge alongside six additional related counts, stemming from the September 2025 incident where 31-year-old Kirk was fatally shot mid-speech at a Utah post-secondary campus. If convicted on the aggravated murder count, Robinson is eligible for the death penalty, a outcome his legal team has aggressively fought to preclude from the proceedings entirely.
Prior to the ruling, prosecuting attorneys notified the court they were fully prepared to move forward with a trial as early as October 2027, and had offered to push the timeline to January 2028 to avoid disruptions from the year-end holiday season. The defense, however, argued they required far more time to conduct rigorous case preparation, and had initially proposed delaying the start of the trial all the way to 2029. Beyond their efforts to remove the death penalty as a possible sentencing outcome, Robinson’s legal team has also filed a motion to bar all recording equipment and cameras from the courtroom during proceedings.
The Kirk family, led by Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika, who shares two young children with the late activist, had publicly advocated for the earliest possible trial start date, and pushed back against the defense’s proposed 2029 timeline by requesting full live-stream access to all court proceedings to ensure transparency. Erika Kirk, along with Charlie’s parents Robert and Kathryn Kirk, have maintained consistent attendance at nearly every pre-trial hearing held in the case to date.
Speaking to the court on behalf of the Kirk family following Monday’s ruling, their legal representative Jeffrey A. Nieman acknowledged that a summer 2028 trial, nearly three full years after Charlie Kirk’s public killing, fell far short of the swift timeline the family had hoped for, but noted they had no option but to acquiesce to the court’s finalized scheduling order. Nieman emphasized that the grieving family had already endured an extended period of uncertainty, and should not be forced to tolerate any further delays to the legal process.
Earlier this year, a five-day preliminary hearing held in July laid out the prosecution’s full body of evidence that they argued established sufficient probable cause to move the case to full trial. Prosecutors presented a suite of evidence including DNA test results they said directly linked Robinson to the recovered murder weapon and physical evidence collected at the crime scene, alleged confessions Robinson made to close personal contacts, and a pre-recorded video testimony from Lance Twiggs, Robinson’s roommate and romantic partner. Lead prosecutor Ryan McBride told the court in a September pre-trial appearance that the state had amassed an overwhelming, mountain-sized body of evidence proving Robinson was the perpetrator, citing cross-referenced video surveillance, forensic DNA matches, direct admissions from the defendant, and corroborating circumstantial evidence. For their part, Robinson’s defense counsel has repeatedly raised challenges to the admissibility of the state’s evidence, and questioned the professional credentials and methodology of multiple prosecution expert witnesses set to testify during the upcoming trial. Prosecutors estimate the full trial proceedings will stretch roughly 17 weeks, while the defense has projected the process could take as long as seven months to complete.
Trial date of alleged Charlie Kirk killer set for June 2028
