Tyler Robinson was in court yesterday. His trial hasn’t started yet but his attorney is doing her best to get the entire prosecution team disqualified from the trial. Why? Because it turns out one of the prosecutors has a daughter who was present at the university when Charlie Kirk was killed.
Chad Grunander, a prosecutor in Utah, was at a legal conference last September when his phone lit up with an urgent text from his 18-year-old daughter: “CHARLIE GOT SHOT.”
That frantic family moment has now become the focus of a legal battle over whether the presence of a prosecutor’s child at the Utah college event where the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot should disqualify the entire prosecution team from the case. Mr. Grunander is a leading member of the prosecution team pursuing the death penalty against Tyler J. Robinson, the 22-year-old charged with killing Mr. Kirk on Sept. 10 as he hosted an open-air debate at Utah Valley University in Orem.
Defense lawyers argue that Mr. Grunander and his colleagues in the Utah County attorney’s office have a disqualifying conflict of interest, and they have asked Judge Tony Graf to remove all of the county’s prosecutors from the case. If that happens, the case is likely to be taken over by another county prosecutor or by the Utah attorney general’s office.
All of the news outlets covering yesterday’s hearing are doing their best to make it sound like this is a close call, a case where some genuine ethical issue is at stake. The not so secret insinuation being made by the defense is that Chad Grunander is pursuing the death penalty in this case because his own family was a witness to the murder.
Regular readers know I usually try to be accommodating to other points of view but in this case, all of this just sounds like complete bunk to me. Chad Grunander’s daughter is not a witness in this case any more than most of the other 3,000 people who were present that day. She has no impact on this case. And if she has an impact on her father what would that be exactly? That murder is bad? That murderers should be prosecuted? Isn’t that his job already to hold those views?
Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray took the stand to say he believes the student is “completely irrelevant to anything that matters in the case.”…
Gray also defended his decision to allow Grunander to remain on the team prosecuting Robinson.
“I do not believe that there is any conflict whatsoever,” Gray said Tuesday. “I made that conclusion. I stand by that.”…
Asked whether his child’s presence that day has impacted his decision making in the case, Grunander said, “No, not at all.”
He said it was clear his child was not in the “zone of danger,” referring to a legal doctrine that in part determines whether people are placed in immediate risk of physical harm.
Once you realize that the defense’s claim about a conflict of interest is absurd, the real goal of all of this becomes more obvious. Tyler Robinson is facing charges that, if he’s convicted, could result in the death penalty. If the defense can get this prosecution team tossed off the case, someone else will wind up making that decision, essentially a do-over on the decision to pursue the death penalty.
Legal experts say removing an entire prosecutor’s office is rare and difficult, but the issue raised by the defense carries broader implications.
“I think to remove an entire office can be very difficult,” Skye Lazaro, a Salt Lake City–based criminal defense attorney not involved in the case, told Fox News Digital. “What this is ultimately going to turn on is whether or not that played any role in their decision to charge this case, and I don’t think that it really did. They were going to prosecute this case regardless, so I think this is an uphill battle.”…
“This isn’t going to keep Tyler Robinson from being prosecuted,” she said. “It just means either a different county attorney’s office would handle it or a special prosecutor would be appointed. And whoever prosecutes the case is the one who decides whether to seek the death penalty — a decision that can change.”
That’s what this is about, Robinson’s attorney is trying to save his life by any means. If there’s a small chance that getting these prosecutors removed would lead to a more cautions set of charges the 2nd time around, she’s going to pursue it. And fine, if you’re on trial for your life, you want an attorney willing to do anything to save you. But none of this means there’s a real conflict here or that Tyler Robinson isn’t the real shooter. On the contrary, some new information was hinted at during yesterday’s hearing.
Testimony from one lead investigator also revealed evidence found at Robinson’s home that has not been reported to the public, including tools believed to be used to inscribe bullet casings and recently purchased shooting targets.
At this point, no amount of evidence is going to convince people like Candace Owens and her fans that Tyler Robinson is the shooter, but I think once we see all the evidence it’s going to be overwhelmingly clear he did it.
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