Shownotes
Whether you’re curious about the details of the preliminary hearing, how the defense will handle the mountain of evidence, or why even the most reviled defendants still deserve a robust legal defense, this episode will unpack the complexities and answer your pressing questions as the case unfolds.
This is what you NEED to know about how the justice system will handle the country’s highest-profile case right now.
The Basics: No Grand Jury in Utah
Utah does things differently—there’s NO grand jury. Prosecutors file charges directly, supported by a probable cause affidavit. This initial phase is all about protecting everyone’s rights, even for the accused in horrific crimes.
Why Probable Cause Matters
A probable cause statement lays out the evidence/accusations, so prosecutors can’t just grab anyone off the street. It’s a paper trail under oath of what the State knows so far.
Initial Appearance: Enter the Accused
The defendant’s first court appearance was done over Zoom/WebEx for safety (think: avoid any “Jack Ruby” moments; if you know, you know). At this appearance, charges are read out loud to give proper notice.
No Bond—And Why
Because the DA is seeking the death penalty, Utah law doesn’t allow for bond in these cases. The defense can’t even make a pitch for release.
Next Up: The Preliminary Hearing Showdown
This is the big one! It’s a live mini-trial where prosecutors have to show the judge enough evidence (probable cause) to move forward. Unlike secret grand juries, this is an open court. If prosecutors flop, the case is dismissed. Expect this hearing to be highly watched.
Public Defenders = Real Lawyers
Don’t knock court-appointed counsel! Death penalty cases require certified, highly trained lawyers. The defense gets the budget for experts—think DNA, ballistics, cyber-forensics.
Mountains of Evidence = Slow Process
With “truckloads of discovery”—every text, Discord chat, DNA swab—review takes TIME. The right to a speedy trial is for the defendant, but in reality, you can’t prep a case of this scale in a few months.
Constitutional Protections Are for Everyone
“This case exemplifies why we have these rights”—even for those accused of monstrous acts. The goal: avoid botched trials, which can lead to appeals and more pain for everyone.
Strategy Talk: What Will the Defense Do?
Expect the defense to check the client’s competency, dig into all the digital evidence, and build rapport (trust is HARD when the system appoints your lawyer). Every fact counts.
Will the Public See Everything?
Not likely. Much discovery stays in the hands of lawyers—public interest is huge, but releasing it all risks poisoning the jury pool and jeopardizing witnesses.
What’s Next? Possible Outcomes…
- Dismissal at preliminary hearing (unlikely, but possible if evidence falls short)
- Plea deal (maybe in exchange for info on other involved parties)
- Full-blown jury trial (with a death penalty phase if convicted)
The Emotional Toll on Lawyers
Even veteran defense attorneys admit: Sometimes a case hits too close to home. If emotions might interfere, you step aside. The system only works if both sides are at their best.
Bottom line:
This is the justice system in the public eye—every step under scrutiny. Don’t let the info vacuum fuel wild theories; wait for facts, demand answers, watch the legal process unfold.
Moments
00:00 Understanding Probable Cause Statements
08:12 Reduced Risks in Prisoner Transport
14:17 "Aggravating Circumstances in Question"
18:21 Court-Appointed Death Penalty Certification
26:31 Experienced Lawyers Essential for Complex Cases
31:40 "Client Transparency Crucial for Defense"
35:04 Complex Case: Speedy Trial Unlikely
40:11 Gun Dismantling Raises Trust Issues
42:58 Unfolding Case Analysis Questions
50:29 Guilt and Death Penalty Phases
54:09 Defense Strategy in Death Penalty Cases
58:26 Ensuring a Competent Legal Defense
Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.
Recorded at Channel 511.
Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.
Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.
He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.
Steve has unique experience handling numerous high publicity cases that have garnered national attention.
For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.
Copyright 2025 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law
Mentioned in this episode:
Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants
Circle 270 Media® is a podcast consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio, specializing in helping businesses develop, launch, and optimize podcasts as part of their marketing strategy. The firm emphasizes the importance of storytelling through podcasting to differentiate businesses and engage with their audiences effectively. www.circle270media.com
Transcripts
All right, LawyerTalkPodcast.com we're going to do a legal breakdown today. We're going to talk about what everybody seems to be talking about. The Charlie Kirk assassination. This is a horrible scenario. I mean, it's just tragic on all levels. But there's legal stuff that's coming and I'm getting questions in my own personal life, I'm getting questions in my professional life and I watch some of the commentators on tv, what they're talking about, and I think it'll be helpful just to break this thing down A to Z on where it's going to go from here.
Troy Hendrickson [:It's probably the most I've ever been on my phone in like the past week. Just trying to stay up to date on everything and just following. It's been, it's been crazy.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, it's horrific. And this has impacted me personally in ways I didn't even anticipate. You know, watching that and people having to see a modern day full blown political assassination.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And now we're going to see a prosecution unfold, an investigation unfold, and it's going to happen in the public eye. And this is. There's lots of questions about what's to come. There's lots of questions about the investigation. There's questions about the facts I'm already hearing. I don't want to call them conspiracy theories, but doubts about what's been at least released so far. So let's break it down first. We'll start with the procedure.
Steve Palmer [:What we had last week, or earlier this week rather, was, was the district attorney or the prosecuting attorney for Utah County. That's where the case is going to be prosecuted. And he had a press conference and he's talking about the charging decisions and a probable cause affidavit. So let's just start with those things.
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:Utah county or Utah apparently has a procedure that does not have a grand jury.
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay. So that's why they're doing probable cause. I was confused.
Steve Palmer [:So that's interesting. And one of the first things this prosecutor said is like, look, we don't have a grand jury out here like we do in federal courts. And I want to explain that because not everybody even understands that there are two types of juries, I guess in the big picture. One is called a grand jury. Another, I guess in common law, we would have called it a petit jury or just the regular jury. Grand jury is not the one where you see a jury trial in open court. A grand jury is a private proceeding conducted by the prosecutors and the Prosecutors present evidence to a grand jury, typically say 25 to 30 people, maybe more. And the participants, the jurors, vote yay or nay, yes or no, on whether there's enough information to charge somebody with a crime.
Steve Palmer [:And we call that probable cause. So if you think about like proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you might think we're going to tip the scales. Or in a football analogy, you go all the way to the one yard line in grand jury terms and probable cause terms, getting to the 51 yard line or 50 and 1 inch line, you just have to tip the scales a little bit. And now, notably at the grand jury, you would not have. The defendant does not have an absolute right to be there as defense counsel. We don't get to participate. And in fact, most of those proceedings are secret. We don't even get the testimony later on 99% of the time.
Steve Palmer [:But Utah doesn't have that. They have something else. And there are basically two ways you can have probable cause determinations. The first is a grand jury. The other is something called a preliminary examination or a preliminary hearing, as you might call it in federal court. So what the procedure was out in Utah. The prosecutor filed charges and the charges they filed are basically murder, murder around a kid. And I'm grossly summarizing this for.
Steve Palmer [:I'm dropping all the legalese.
Troy Hendrickson [:You don't know Utah law off the back of your hand like this.
Steve Palmer [:No, I don't. I did read some of it just to see what they're doing. But what I carefully paid attention to is the big picture charges. They charged the murder charges, and then they added charges or specifications or facts that would indicate that there was a murder with kids around and other people around, as well as some misdemeanor stuff about discharging firearms in public. Some of those, I'm not going to call them throwaways because they're serious crimes. But what the prosecutor did, I think he was even asked, why did you charge those crimes? He said, because the code led us, because it's in our code. And that's pretty typical. You see a list or a litany of charges by prosecutors, and what they're doing is they're picking offenses and they've enumerated, I think, I don't know, six in this case.
Steve Palmer [:But they're all essentially the same conduct, charged with different crimes based on the same conduct. Then what the prosecutor did is he read a probable cause statement. This is, what is it? And you know, this sort of begs the question, what's or demands the next question which is, what's a probable cause statement? A probable cause statement is the police or the investigative summary typically under oath as to what facts support the charges that the prosecutor has selected. In other words, they file a complaint and they go arrest the suspect. And so far there's no grand jury proceeding and there's no preliminary hearing, only this probable cause statement to support the charge. And the idea here is you can't just willy nilly file a charge against somebody without any facts. The law requires some supporting information. Now, I should take, we'll take an aside here because I think it's really significant that this prosecutor was careful to make sure he said out loud several times, we want to make sure that the defense is getting a fair shake here.
Steve Palmer [:You know, make no mistakes. He says, we're going to prosecute this guy to the fullest extent of the law. And, and we believe that we have the evidence to do it, but we're not going to do anything to compromise the defense. I think at one point he even enumerated the defendant's trial rights, and we'll get to that shortly. But the probable cause statement is designed to protect us against government action. And everybody's thinking, why would we bother protecting this horrible person who assassinated Charlie Kirk? Because that's the protection you would want if you were charged with a crime.
Troy Hendrickson [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:And we don't get to pick and choose who gets the rights. And again, hats off to this prosecutor for making sure he was saying that out loud.
Troy Hendrickson [:So this probable cause thing is different here in Ohio, where probable cause hearing, which I've never seen one, and you were explaining that it just never happens here, there they don't even do a hearing. They just read it out loud. And then like, well, good question. They just attach the affidavit, I imagine, to the indictment.
Steve Palmer [:Now, here in Ohio, what you might see is two different ways. This is as if somebody here in Ohio were charged by way of a criminal complaint. The prosecutor or the police swear out a statement, swear out a complaint, they go file it and then they go arrest the suspect. That is before a grand jury would have ever convened. And that is before there'd ever be a preliminary hearing. That complaint is supported by the probable cause statement. The next step in the procedure then will be something called an initial appearance. And that occurred, I think, that same day of this press conference.
Steve Palmer [:And for those, let's talk about the initial appearance. Then you had the suspect appear and he appeared by Zoom or WebEx, I think. Now, I think again the not, I think again the prosecutor Was very careful here to say, look, we're not treating this any differently than anybody else. We have a practice in our county of doing these initial appearances by WebEx. And, you know, why do they do that?
Troy Hendrickson [:Just so people don't think that he's like, he's getting a fair process, I guess, compared to everybody else. I don't know.
Steve Palmer [:Well, sure. No, but why do they do the WebEx presentation? You don't get transport.
Troy Hendrickson [:Then he's already. He's in the jail. Like, they're like, hey, go from here, this room to this room. And now you're in court instead of actually putting him in a truck, transporting him. There's just a lot of risk with all that. It'd just be way safer and easier to just zoom them in. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:In the old days, we would have the sheriffs load everybody up on a bus, put them in handcuffs, drive them to the courthouse. And this still happens a lot of places. But really, if there's anything good that came from COVID it's this kind of stuff sort of became a mainstay. And during that transportation process, there's all sorts of risk. We've had people escape. There's, you know, there's just risk in this case. I think you even brought up, we were talking at one point upstairs about the Kennedy assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. And famously, they dragged Oswald out, had a press conference, and he was in open public, and Jack Ruby shot him.
Steve Palmer [:Now, the conspiracy theorists would say Ruby was in on it in some way, shape or form. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But the point is, that can't happen if our suspect here is appearing for his initial appearance from jail via WebEx. So it's not just a benefit to the state, it's also a benefit to the defendant. On some level, I kind of wish.
Troy Hendrickson [:We had press conferences with people just to. I think it made the decision, hey.
Steve Palmer [:Mr. Robinson, what happened? What'd you do? They were just shouting questions out. So the initial appearance. And what is that? That's designed solely to inform the accused, the defendant here, Robinson, what he's charged with, what are the accusations against him? And they read those out loud, typically. And they did hear. They read the charges out loud. Do you know why they do that?
Troy Hendrickson [:Just so you know what they are? Yeah, they can't argue like, oh, he did. I didn't know what my charges were like. No, we read them out loud to you.
Steve Palmer [:You give him notice. And historically, it wasn't always true that people could read and write. The judge then would Read the charges out loud. Now, often in cases when we do initial appearances, you would know them locally. Here we show up in court, again, they do it in WebEx, and we waive reading of the charges out loud because we don't want to sit there for 15 minutes while the judge reads everything out loud. But here they read the charges out loud to Robinson. They asked him, do you understand what you're charged with? Yes, I do. And then they move on.
Steve Palmer [:The second step of an initial appearance, rather, is bond. And typically what would happen is the judge would hear arguments from both sides about whether there should be bond. Sometimes there's a scheduled bond, so sometimes there's a process where the bond is already in place by the time you get to initial appearance. Here there was no bond because under Utah law, it is. Under Utah law, it's a no bond situation because there's a death penalty request out of the prosecutor's office.
Troy Hendrickson [:Interesting.
Steve Palmer [:You know, how do you feel on that?
Troy Hendrickson [:Like, I understand. Yes. Death pie situation. Of all the situations, I would think, yes, this would be the one. We don't have a bond. But do you think everybody should still have an opportunity to at least try to get bond?
Steve Palmer [:I. I guess I. I don't. I don't know. If I have a specific thought. I would say this. Utah has the authority to do it. If they're, if they're code.
Steve Palmer [:If their legal criminal code says that if somebody is charged with death, it's a no bond scenario, I think they can do that legitimately. Now, do I agree with that? Look, you could say it's no bond, or they could set a $100 million bond, which is what they would do.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yes.
Steve Palmer [:So you sort of end up in the same scenario they make. They make the bond unreachable by any measure. But I don't have a problem with a no bond scenario where somebody's accused with in a death case like this.
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay. In my head, I was just thinking, I feel like almost everybody should be at least allowed to make their arguments. But I agree the judge would just make up some ridiculous number where you're never going to achieve it. But I just feel like everybody should at least be allowed to say their piece on whether or not they should get bond.
Steve Palmer [:Now, I've worked on death penalty cases before, and sometimes we get to the bond, we do the initial appearance or you do the arraignment where again, bond is addressed, and they ask if I have any argument about it. And I just say we'll defer to the court because I know what's coming. You know, they're not going to let the guy out. But that was the initial appearance and that's already occurred. So you've got the criminal complaints filed, probable cause statement, initial appearance. They've informed Robinson what he's charged with. And no bond because there's death penalty specifications. And the next step will be something called a preliminary hearing.
Steve Palmer [:I know other jurisdictions might call it a preliminary examination. And federal court in Ohio, and it's a preliminary hearing. And what that is is an open presentation by the prosecutor of evidence to a judge to establish probable cause. So it's going to be basically a live version of the probable cause affidavit. And in theory, if the prosecutor doesn't meet its probable cause burden, the case gets dismissed. They don't. They don't have enough. I think they, being the prosecutor here, was careful enough to outline sufficient facts to establish probable cause.
Steve Palmer [:And it's probably worth talking about some of those facts right now. Among the facts that they outlined were they were careful to allege that there were people all around. They even said that the backdrop of the tent where Charlie was sitting, there was buildings back there with glass, with people walking back and forth. Any thought why they were saying that in their probable cause affidavit?
Troy Hendrickson [:No, I don't know why there's people in his line of fire.
Steve Palmer [:Yes. So what they're saying is there were other people at risk of serious physical harm. And that along with children being present, and those are aggravating circumstances that will trigger Utah's death penalty statute.
Troy Hendrickson [:You're saying children present. This is a college campus. Like, did they present people who are under 18? That's how I would define children. I get it. 18 year old college kids, we would call them kids. But in a legal definition, I feel like they're not kids.
Steve Palmer [:Well, you had Kirk's kids present.
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:Charlie's kids were present. And then you've got other people who are at risk and danger in the line of fire. They even said one of the guy asking the question was the shot would have had to go right by him. So putting him at danger. In other words, these are aggravating circumstances that trigger the death penalty. And this brings up another question which I pondered, and that is whether everybody watching it live streamed are children present for purposes of Utah law? That's good point. I think they're gonna be able to bring in dozens and dozens, hundreds of people probably who are watching this. Either people on their phones or on YouTube or something.
Steve Palmer [:And whether that will trigger The Utah death penalty statute. But I don't think there's going to be any problem based on the accusations. I did read some of the Utah death penalty statute and it looks like it's going to apply here. And the prosecutor was careful to put those facts in the affidavit. Now they're going to have to come to court and do a full blown preliminary hearing, just as a juxtaposition. In many cases, like here in Ohio, you've never seen a preliminary hearing. Some counties do it still or have conduct preliminary hearings still. But in the main they don't.
Steve Palmer [:The prosecutors try to avoid it. Any idea why?
Troy Hendrickson [:You gotta bring in witnesses. You gotta basically give a. I don't know how long these hearings would be, but I imagine it could be a couple hours. Or you're just trying to establish probable cause. It's just a lot of work.
Steve Palmer [:Well, it's a lot of work and you're sharing information and evidence really early in the case. And I think you might say on our side of the fence, we do criminal defense. Well, tough luck. But prosecutors don't like that. They have to get their ducks in a row rather quickly. And sometimes that means putting a victim on the witness stand. Sometimes that means sharing investigative information that's still sensitive, like in this case, because it's ongoing. But the preliminary hearing is going to be a watershed moment.
Steve Palmer [:Now, I don't know whether they're going to let cameras in the courtroom when they do this, but everybody's going to be riveted to their screens on this thing, figuring out what the evidence is, assuming that the prosecutor can meet its burden of probable cause at the preliminary hearing, the case goes forward and then it proceeds just like any other case. If they, by the way, if they didn't have a preliminary hearing, you might be asking what happens. Well, that's when the case would normally go to a grand jury and the grand jury would just directly indict it. That substitutes the probable cause hearing because the idea is the grand jurors have rubber stamped it.
Troy Hendrickson [:It's kind of interesting that they don't have any grand juries. That's just crazy to me.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, they don't have grand juries out there. It's just their procedure. Michigan, I think, has a similar procedure. They have preliminary examinations and those things become the mainstay of the procedure. But after that, assuming we have the probable cause, and I think we will, I think there's plenty of information to establish probable cause. Now, we may disagree. I think there's going to be Lots of people asking questions about those facts. And we'll get to that here at the end.
Steve Palmer [:But that's a different question about whether there's probable cause. I think the affidavit was sufficient to establish probable cause. I'm sure Robinson's lawyers will be all over that. But this is a good time maybe to talk about his lawyers. Now, we all know that we have a right to counsel. It's the sixth Amendment. And that means that if you can't afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one, meaning there's court appointed representation or the public defender's office. This is probably a good time to say, look, there are lots and lots of great public defenders.
Steve Palmer [:There are lots and lots of capable court appointed lawyers. Just because it's a court appointed lawyer doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing. And it's probably worthy of at least talking about the uniqueness of death penalty cases in Ohio. If I as a attorney am going to represent somebody in a death penalty case, I don't need any specific qualifications if they're paying me to be there.
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:If, however I'm going to be appointed, if the judge is, if I want to be on a list of a selection list of lawyers who do court appointed death penalty work, then I have to complete certification, I have to complete education, or I have to complete education hours and get certified. I think it's Rule 20 certified in Ohio to be able to accept appointments to do that death penalty work on court appointed basis. And I believe that was also mentioned somewhere. Maybe I heard one of the talking heads talk about it. But what's going to happen here is I don't think Robinson has any money. I hear tell that his parents are not going to fund the lawyer, that they've sort of said, look, we did our part, we're going to just leave it to the system to handle this.
Troy Hendrickson [:Even if they did have money, the amount of like material that a private attorney would have to look through.
Steve Palmer [:Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Troy Hendrickson [:Oh, yeah. I mean, it'd be insane.
Steve Palmer [:You would say, well, that's not. How could a lawyer possibly. Bill, this is. If you have this case, this is going to be your sole project until the end.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:However long that is. And you know, that may be well over a year here, FBI would literally.
Troy Hendrickson [:Bring in like truckloads of discovery for you to look over. It'd be insane.
Steve Palmer [:Now you have seen. So this is a great transition. So once the case proceeds, there's court appointed lawyers, then comes the discovery process and the discovery process is the lawyers will file a request for discovery. Typically, that's Rule 16 in almost every jurisdiction of some sort. But discovery means the defense gets access to witness statements, to results of examinations, to cell phone records, to DNA records, all the interviews of witnesses conducting. There's going to be hundreds of them here. And then think of the video and audio footage that they're going to have to listen. I mean, there is.
Steve Palmer [:This is. You're right, this is truckloads of discovery case. And then we as defense lawyers have to review it. I mean, we have to actually look at it because, you know, you could say, well, that's not important to the case because the case is about this over here. But if we don't look at it, we're not doing a service to our client. There's always. There's a needle in a haystack somewhere.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And we have to look for it or we're not doing our jobs. And that means this case is going to drag and drag and drag in another interview or another conversation I had with somebody. They were like, well, how long? Look, we have a right to a speedy trial. Again, this is the Sixth Amendment. You have a right to a speedy and public trial. But here I think it's important to note the right to a speedy trial is Robinson's. It's not Trump's, it's not the prosecutor's, it's not the government's. It's Robinson's.
Steve Palmer [:It's his right to a speedy trial. Why am I saying this? Because I already heard, and we hear this all the time from prosecutors. I mean, you've seen me appear at arraignment where the prosecutors in a complicated murder case, or saying, we want a trial in 45 days. And I'm like, wait a minute. I can't get ready effectively to represent this guy in 45 days. I'm going to get a truckload of discovery. And they've had the case for a year, and now you want me to figure it out in 45 days. It's impossible.
Steve Palmer [:What they're doing is putting the onus on me to waive my right, my client's right to a speedy trial so I can prepare the case. So there's two versions of speedy trial. You have a statutory speedy trial and you have constitutional speedy trial. It's beyond the scope of this conversation, but typically our statute would say you have to try somebody within 270 days. Here in Ohio, it's probably something similar out there. That sounds like a long time. It's not flies by.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:If somebody's held in jail, it's three for one. So it's not, you know, what is that, 90. Whatever it is, it's a. Yeah.
Troy Hendrickson [:So here, statutorily, he would have 90 days because he's going to be held.
Steve Palmer [:He's going to be held. Right. And you can't. There's no way you can get this case ready in 90 days. Therefore, the defense is going to have to waive their right to a speedy trial. That also means that everybody's just going to have to take a step back, let the process work. It is unfair to the defense to force them to get ready for this case in 90 days. And, you know, I heard Trump already say it.
Steve Palmer [:We're going to push for a quick trial. And I understand that. I understand the emotion. I'm not being callous here, because, look, I get it. But again, hats off to the prosecutor who was very careful to say, we're going to do this right. We're going to make sure that Robinson's right to trial is protected, that his right to present a defense is protected, that his right to cross examine and subpoena witnesses, all these things are protected and intact. Because we're going to do this, we're going to go after him, we're going to convict this guy. But we don't want to skip any steps, and we don't want to compromise the conviction later on some constitutional violation because of the human crime.
Steve Palmer [:This is why we have these rights. This case exemplifies why we have these rights. And by hue and cry, I mean the public is outraged by this, rightfully so. This is the time where we need to make sure the bulwark against unfair practices is in place, because if it's not in place in this case, it won't be there in the next case. And this is why we have the Bill of Rights. This is why we have these constitutional protections. And this is why that prosecutor, you know, he wasn't the most eloquent guy. You can tell he's not a grandstander for the camera.
Steve Palmer [:And good, because he's a guy that puts his nose down and does his job. And he wanted to make sure that he is telling everybody up front, we're going to do this the right way. I hope he does. We shall see. I, like everybody else, want to see. Like, we have two roles here, right? I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I'm a constitutionalist. I am very conservative in my ideals.
Steve Palmer [:And I think it's very important that at the Same time to make sure even the worst of the worst gets a fair trial.
Troy Hendrickson [:My thought has always been that if we don't give this guy a fair trial or anybody, especially when the evidence is overwhelming, you're just giving him an opportunity to appeal and then we got to do it all over again. You better just do it all correctly the first time.
Steve Palmer [:Do it correct the first time. Build the foundation of the case.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah. And that way the appeal is just pointless, frivolous like.
Steve Palmer [:That's right.
Troy Hendrickson [:Don't give him a chance.
Steve Palmer [:So don't get squirrely given discovery out. Don't get squirrely forcing the defendant to a quick trial when his lawyers are saying, look, I can't do it. I can't possibly do any more time. And I don't think they will. I don't think they will. I think this will get plenty of time to get to develop the defense will get plenty of time to build their case. And whether it ever goes to trial, who knows? But that would be the next step is a jury trial. Now, what happens at a jury trial? All the things we talked about.
Steve Palmer [:The prosecutor is going to present evidence, they're going to present witnesses. They're going to have to prove each and every element of these crimes beyond reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a jury. Can they do that? Time will tell. It looks like they've got a pretty solid case. They've got allegedly fingerprints on the trigger of the gun. They've got footprints that are going to match what he was wearing. They've got what seems to be confessions or at least an inference they said to the parents and maybe a confession to people on not signal the other one discord. And then they've got these roommate texts which I think are going to be worthy of some discussion here in a minute.
Steve Palmer [:But before I go there, let's talk about what Robinson's defense lawyers will encounter, what they will do and what the first interaction would be.
Troy Hendrickson [:In my head, I mean, the defense attorney is going to go to jail, prison and no jail. And he'll talk to them, kind of just get his side of the story. That's what I would do at least. And I don't know what his side is. I hope that he would just be as honest as possible with attorney. I know you've ran into that problem before where you have clients try to talk to them and they're obviously not telling the truth. And that's extremely frustrating because I don't know why someone would lie to their attorney. You have nothing to lose.
Troy Hendrickson [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:This is Difficult. And this is why you need seasoned, experienced lawyers. Because if we go in to a case like this and say just tell me what happened, just the facts or, and write down, you get to pull your yellow pad out and start writing. I don't think you're going to get anywhere. Look, we're going to talk maybe in a bit too about whether I would actually do this case. But I'm taking it out of that role and looking at this sort of clinically. Right now his attorneys are going to go meet with him and I say attorneys because there's going to be at least two, I would guarantee at least two, maybe more, because this is going to be an enormous case. There will also be appointed as needed on behalf of the defense experts.
Steve Palmer [:If they need a DNA expert to analyze the evidence they found on the trigger, if they need a footprint expert or a forensic evidence expert, they'll get that too. If they need cellular communications type expert or electronic evidence type expert, they're going to get that. And by that I mean there's probably going to be evidence about location relying on cell phone evidence. We already know there's this discord chat and other stuff going on. There's going to be a ballistics expert trying to link the bullet if they ever, if they can. I don't know if they've ever found the slug. But anyway, there's, there's, that stuff will happen. So it's not going to just be lawyers.
Steve Palmer [:There will also be an investigator, a defense investigator and there will also be various scientific experts as the defense deems necessary. And generally what would happen is the defense. Sometimes I've even done, I did this recently, I had a case and my client didn't have the funds. I made a request of the judge or the court to supply us money to hire an expert and that required an in camera meeting with the judge. And that's fancy lawyer talk for saying private. I went and met with the judge privately and said look, here's what we're looking at for the defense. Here's why we need an expert. Now why was that private?
Troy Hendrickson [:The prosecutor wasn't there.
Steve Palmer [:Correct.
Troy Hendrickson [:Oh, because that's, it'd be work product at that point. That's right, yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, there you go. So the prosecutor has the advantage of calling whatever expert it wants at its disposal and it gets to use your dollars to do it. They now they have some disadvantages if they look at evidence or they have experts look at evidence and it's helpful to the defense in Theory. They're supposed to turn that over to us. It's called Brady v. Maryland. And they have to give us the evidence that's helpful to the defense. We don't have that obligation.
Steve Palmer [:I get to have experts look at evidence. I get to have experts look at whatever issue I want to look at. And even if the experts can't help me, I don't have to give it to the government. I get to do that privately to defend my case. Because sometimes what I want to do is just check boxes. I want to say, look, I wonder. We're working on a case. We're trying it next week.
Steve Palmer [:We had experts look at it. They were helpful to us, so we're going to use them. But if they weren't helpful to us, I never would have told the other side. And I'm not shy about saying I'm not obligated to tell the other side. Why would I? But if it's a case where my client can't afford puts you in this box, or this paradox where we want to publicly ask for money to hire an expert, but. But we don't want to tell the prosecutor what we're doing, we have the right to do that. And that likely will happen here. The judge will likely fund experts on behalf of the defense.
Steve Palmer [:So back to your first meeting. The first thing you need to do here is establish a rapport with the client. And it wouldn't be out of the realm of how I do things here. If I were representing this guy. I wouldn't even. I might not even talk about the case at first. How are you holding up?
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:You need a rapport. And the reason is, is that your client. I'm going to take it away from this guy. Our clients feel like they can trust no one at this juncture in the game, and that may be true. And the only people they can trust are the people in front of them who've been appointed to represent them. But that's done. That's a government appointment. Why would I even trust that guy? Yeah, there needs to be a rapport.
Steve Palmer [:And it's, you know, I don't know, the personality of this guy. I don't know what they're dealing with. I know nothing about it. But it starts with that. I might also expect at some juncture, some sort of request for competency evaluation, see what's going on. I mean, look, if you're caught on video camera committing a murder, and I'm not saying that's what happened here, but it's close. If you're Caught committing a murder. There might be other stuff.
Steve Palmer [:We'll get to that. But, you know, what are your defenses? You've got insanity, You've got. What would they be? It's like, can the prosecutor prove it? It looks like they can. What do you do? Well, maybe my guy's insane. Maybe he's not competent to stand trial. These. These things that the legal team is going to have to work out, and they're going to want to check those boxes, so there might be some early evaluations to see. And then you're going to bring in your team, and you're slowly going to develop a rapport and slowly try to get to the facts.
Steve Palmer [:As I tell my clients often, because there's this notion, I think, when people are sitting in that hot seat, that they don't feel like they can tell us everything. They want to steer the narrative, the story, even to their own lawyers. And the best way to put this is I can protect my clients in some way, or at least I'll say I can only protect my clients from things I know about. I can't protect my clients from things I don't know about. If there is facts that they're not giving me because they think it's going to make them look more guilty to me or they want to hide it from the case in general, I need to know. Because if I don't know those facts and I can take a turn in the case, make a strategic choice in a case that steps me in that pile of goo that ruins. That really blows up the defense. So the clients need to know that.
Steve Palmer [:That means if there's going to be any effective defense, we need to know all the facts. And clients are thinking, well, I can't tell you that because, you know, I don't try. Whatever it is, it's hard to break through that glass wall and get all the facts. And sometimes we never do. Yeah, I mean, I've tried cases where I've looked at my clients dead in the eye and say, you're not telling me everything. And I know it. You're. I'm going to make it.
Steve Palmer [:I'm gonna put it on the record. I might even put in writing. Yeah, I don't think you're telling me everything. Here's what I think you're not telling me. Here's the topics I would like to know about. And, you know, why am I doing that?
Troy Hendrickson [:So make sure you can't be thrown out for, like, ineffective. Yeah, you tried. You tried doing what you.
Steve Palmer [:I don't. I'm Protecting myself. And I'm making, I'm also making a point to my client how important it is, because sometimes when you do that, they're like, holy crap, this is really serious. I should tell them. And then you get to the bottom of it, because that's the goal. The goal is to help your client. But it's going to take hours and hours of work to unravel this. Now, we have talked a little bit about the evidence, these texts and all this other stuff.
Steve Palmer [:Why don't we talk a bit about what the lawyers are going to do with that mess?
Troy Hendrickson [:Okay. The evidence. We don't really know everything yet. What I was going to ask you is when do you think that they will start publicizing some of this stuff?
Steve Palmer [:Well, there's two questions. When is the prosecutor going to make it public, if ever? And when's the defense going to get it? Okay, the defense will get it when they file demand for discovery. And I imagine there's a team of prosecutors and staff working on this already to unload this evidence and get it to the defense. As far as when it comes public, I think a lot of it will become more apparent at the preliminary hearing because that's a public hearing. They're going to whatever they present. But some of it may never. You know, we have cases upstairs where we have volumes of discovery that nobody ever knows about.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah. And so the defense is going to request it. I think here is it 30 or 45 days?
Steve Palmer [:I'm trying to remember a motions deadline.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Okay, so pretrial motions, we have 35 days after arraignment in order to file motions challenging things like.
Troy Hendrickson [:No, no, no. The discovery deadline, like when time stops tolling. If I'm the defense attorney, I request discovery from you. Now that speed trial clock hits a pause. I'm waiting for you to give me discovery. Now, in most cases, that 30 day time window can easily be met.
Steve Palmer [:It gets told. All the timelines on this case are going to be uniquely told because of the complexity of it and because of the nature of it. I can't imagine a defense strategy that would put their foot on the gas pedal and say, give me a speedy and public trial. Now, maybe, maybe, but that'd be a difficult choice to make. The only way you could possibly justify that is say, look, we don't think that they're going to get their ducks in a row in time. So we're going to try to, you know, short circuit the process and force them into a quick trial. I think that would be a bad strategy.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah, no, it's a terrible strategy, but I just. They would ask for it, time would get told, they would get the discovery. I imagine not in 30 days. It would be like a very long time. And they'd probably still begin discovery.
Steve Palmer [:Discovery in this case will be ongoing and then the defense investigation. So the FBI is still out there working. They're still investigating this discourse chat. They're still investigating others. And if I'm the defense attorney, look, you can look at this affidavit and say, it seems pretty cut and dry, but there are questions about that affidavit. There are questions about those text messages. You read the language between Twig and Robinson. These text.
Steve Palmer [:It's just awful. It just seems awful. Phony. The verbiage they use, the vocabulary he chose. It's sort of like there's either establishing an alibi for Twig or trying to make it so Twig doesn't. Whatever it is, something is a little odd. And I came up with a couple thoughts. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if it were all phony and Twig and Robinson tried to give Twig a way out.
Steve Palmer [:So if Twitter part of it knew it was going to happen, maybe even participated on some level, like going to the range or something.
Troy Hendrickson [:But no, I thought it was more like alibi. And then I thought you had an interesting take on the police had the phone at the time, and then we're trying to get a confession how Robinson. I've never heard that thought. And so I just didn't even know that was a thing.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me. Look, there's a. I always say I would want to know a couple things. I would want to know. I want to know the timing of these texts. Now, in context, you can say, well, look, I'm waiting to get my vehicle, or I've got my vehicle here, and I'm waiting to retrieve my gun, and I'm waiting. Some of this is really bizarre, but that sort of implies a timeline that is consistent with what was going on during the minutes after the shooting or hours after the shooting. And so we can sort of maybe insert those into a timeline.
Steve Palmer [:But I don't think the affidavit or I know the affidavit didn't say at such and such a time and such and such. This text, or Twig sent this text and Robin sent this text, and we've had texts. This may be a product of discord and how they get the information, I don't know. Look, I don't have discord. But I don't know if they're timestamped or marked on the face.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah, no, they are timestamped. Right there. It'll say the date and then the time. The problem I have with looking at all this right now is I'm seeing it from unofficial sources. For all I know, they edited it a little bit, or they will have. I just want to see an official log. That's all I really, really want.
Steve Palmer [:What you want to see is not the description in the affidavit which has ellipses, meaning, like, you can tell those are cut out of context in some way to put in the affidavit. Now, look, that's okay. They can do that. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a conspiracy theory and there's all sorts of stuff going on behind the scenes. What they had to provide in a probable cause affidavit was enough information to establish probable cause, and maybe that's it. But on the defense side, I want to know all the facts. I want to see the log of text messages of discord chat going on. And that means sometimes, look, we've done it.
Steve Palmer [:You've seen me do it. I pull out people's phones on my conference table and I take a picture of it, and I scroll to the next. I take a picture, and then we put it all together. Yeah, it seems so. It seems like rudimentary with today's technology, but that's a great way to do it.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And you know, we see. Sometimes we get printed out logs based on celebrate reports, which is like a cell phone dump.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Sometimes you'll see that.
Troy Hendrickson [:I know these logs are massive.
Steve Palmer [:It's huge. Right.
Troy Hendrickson [:And some are, like, written in a foreign language. It's like, what's going on here?
Steve Palmer [:And we're going to have here the FBI getting discourse chat from all sorts of other possible participants, suspects or people who knew. But I want to piece this together because some of that early stuff isn't adding up. I'm not saying that this means that Robinson's innocent, but when you defend a case like this, or even when you prosecute a case like this, you want to answer all the questions. I can't protect my client against stuff I don't know. I need to know it all. So I want to put it all together. And that's what I suspect his defense team will be doing. As far as the prosecutor, I think it will behoove them to do the same thing, and I suspect that they will.
Steve Palmer [:I suspect that all these questions will be answered whether it's the same gun. There's all these questions about how did he dismantle the gun? Did he have part of it in his backpack? Did he take the stock off? He had a screwdriver that had his DNA on it, based on the probable cause affidavit. But we don't really understand why that was used. Maybe he unscrewed two screws, took the stock off, put one of them in his pants leg. That's why they. There's so many questions, and this is what happens when there's not enough information. People fill the void with their own questions, their own theories, and then trust, and then you lose trust in the system. There needs to be, like you said, at some point.
Steve Palmer [:When are we all going to know? Hopefully as soon as possible.
Troy Hendrickson [:In my head, why not when the prosecutor shares discovery? Because there's such public interest in this. Why not at the same time, just put it online? Hey, here's what we shared with. I understand there's the council only stuff like don't look at that, don't do anything with that. But like for instance, we shared with the defense the discord logs. Here's an online. You guys can look at them.
Steve Palmer [:Generally speaking, that doesn't happen.
Troy Hendrickson [:I know, but why not?
Steve Palmer [:Well, you tell me.
Troy Hendrickson [:In my head, the only reason I can think of is if I am the defense side, we can no longer have a jury here because they've been polluted with discovery.
Steve Palmer [:Reason number one. Right. So now the jury sees stuff and is exposed to stuff that may not be admissible in a courtroom. That compromises the defense. Right. To a spare trial or a fair trial, rather.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Number two, sometimes that evidence or that information can put people in jeopardy if there are other people involved. If somebody. If somebody was a snitch or an informant or cooperating, you don't necessarily want that information out there in the public purview either, or any information that would lead to that. The defense gets stuff that the public doesn't. It's just how it is. And it may be. Look, you've got Kennedy files that have been sealed for how long you've got. I guarantee the OJ File hasn't been completely released.
Steve Palmer [:Or maybe it has because there was a civil case, but much later, years later, you might get public records requests where some of this stuff gets released. But in the course of an ongoing investigation, and we've heard this several times out of the prosecutors and the police, look, investigation is ongoing. I can't share that because they don't want to compromise the Next step in the investigation. And the conspiracy theorists are going to say, well, looks like they're hiding something. And my response is, maybe I need to know more. I need to know more. I need to know more about what's not being disclosed. And then I want to see what does get disclosed.
Steve Palmer [:I want to watch it as it unfolds. But if I'm representing Robinson, I'm going to be piecing all this together on my own. I want to build the prosecutor's case so I know what I'm dealing with. Now what are the questions? I mean, immediately we all have like there's hundreds of questions out there. Yeah, we talked about some of them. How could he have hidden the gun? And how could he have gotten the gun up the stairs? It looks like he was limping here, but not there. You know, did he take the gun apart? Did he put it together? And then you've got like this weird stuff coming out on Discord where people are talking or are sort of issuing these ominous Something's going to happen to Charlie Kirk on this date.
Troy Hendrickson [:I hope they hire a Discord expert. I'd like to just see some male gamer in his 30s out of his parents basement come forward and testify how Discord works. I think that'd be kind of interesting.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, like the kind of crap that gets chattered about.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah, that'd be interesting.
Steve Palmer [:And how many people wonder how you get that job? This is, I'll bet you they're FBI people. Their job is to watch Discord. Now, some of the other dilemmas you're going to run into is I think Discord is United States, but Signal isn't. Signal's overseas, one of the Scandinavian countries, I believe. But we can't just go get that information or the FBI can't necessarily just subpoena that information and get it, or issue search warrants for that information and get it. We may never get everything. You know, that's going to be the. And when you.
Steve Palmer [:Again, when you have a vacuum, it gets filled with alternative theories. And sometimes those theories are crazy, sometimes they're not crazy. But that's what happens. You have to close every door. You have to open up every door and then close it. You have to look at behind every stone or under every stone, whatever the sayings would be. You have to do that in order to ensure one, and most important, you get your fair conviction. And two, the public knows it because the system only is only as good as what the public sees.
Steve Palmer [:You know, if you have a system in place that cast doubt on Its veracity by its very nature. In other words, the public looks at this and says, I still have questions. And you can think Kennedy assassination, Warren Report Epstein. Once there are. Once there's that vacuum of information, it creates doubt and, you know, and then that's sort of bigger picture justice from the defense side. You have a situation where if you don't know all the facts, you can't mount a defense. It may be whether even your client says he did it, but maybe somebody else did it, maybe he's covering. Now, there's another route that we could see this case going.
Steve Palmer [:I think it's worthy of discussing this. We're all assuming. There seems to be an assumption. I'm not necessarily assuming it, but there seems to be an assumption. Case is going to trial. Is there any alternatives?
Troy Hendrickson [:Pleading guilty, pleading guilty, insanity, Maybe the probable cause hearing goes terrible, then it gets dismissed.
Steve Palmer [:Could be.
Troy Hendrickson [:I'm saying these are the possibilities.
Steve Palmer [:No, no, that's right. So let's talk about pleading guilty. There is, I think, a very reasonable possibility that there are other people who were aware that this was going to happen. Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Might be twig, might be discord, might be whoever.
Troy Hendrickson [:Like I said, I mean, we're talking about Boston bombing, roommates, all that knew it was, like, figured out it wasn't whatever, and they didn't do anything about it, and those guys got charged.
Steve Palmer [:So if you go back to the premise that we were talking about, you have this notion that empty space, empty vacuums fill up with doubt. Getting information is important for the government. And even in the most heinous crimes, that information has value. It could be that Robinson is guilty as the day is long. And it seems that that's what is the case for those out there who say, how can you jump to that conclusion? Well, look, I can wear two hats here. I can understand what it takes to prove somebody guilty. I can understand my job of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And everybody's presumed to be innocent, and Robinson is.
Steve Palmer [:And then I can look at something factually and say, yeah, but looks like they can do that. So that's what I'm talking about. At least on its face, it seems like he's guilty. But let's say he's got information about others who were either part of the planning or had knowledge. Like you're talking about. If the government fills that vacuum with the truth, that has value. And if that has value, it gives Robinson a little bit of a bargaining chip. I'm not suggesting that the prosecutor's going to let Robinson walk out of this thing because he shares information.
Steve Palmer [:But it wouldn't be beyond the scope of reality that Robinson avoids a death penalty if he shares information that would not be outside the scope of reality. Now, there are cases where prosecutors say, I don't give a damn. I don't care what you know, I don't care what you give me. I don't care anything about it. I'm not taking the death penalty off the table. We're going full steam ahead. We'll see.
Troy Hendrickson [:The thing is, they've been pushing really hard, death penalty. And maybe when the emotions come down a little bit.
Steve Palmer [:Well, that's right.
Troy Hendrickson [:Maybe that will change in my head. It's just. I just feel like they've been pushing it really hard. I feel like no matter what. So is there any possibility he still pleads guilty and gets the death penalty? Yep, in my head. Then I would just kind of go to trial. If you got nothing to lose, that's what.
Steve Palmer [:If I was in. Let's talk about how that looks. Let's say the prosecutor says, look, you could tell me who the man on the moon is. You could tell me who shot Kennedy. You could tell me whatever you want. Robinson, I'm going after you and you're going to get the death penalty. Or we're going to die trying to. Then you've got the defense saying, well, why wouldn't I go to trial? Now, we'll get to this.
Steve Palmer [:Because, look, sometimes before we do that, though, there are cases, famous cases, where guys say, look, let's just cut to the quick here. Kill me now. I'm going to waive my rights. I'm going to plead guilty. I'm going to just volunteer for the death penalty. I don't even want to risk spending the rest of my life, kill me now. Let's just get it over with. Or then you've got guys who are convicted and they are found guilty, and the jury recommends death, the judge imposes death, and they say, I'm not going to appeal.
Steve Palmer [:Let's just jump ahead and get this done. I don't want to live for 10, 15 years on death row worrying about getting the lethal injection or the firing squad or whatever it would be happens. And you get guys who are suicidal. You get guys that's just. It happened. So it's very possible, I suppose, that Robinson just says, kill me. I plead guilty. I did it.
Steve Palmer [:Could be. Yeah, could be. Let's say he doesn't. Here's how the trial. I imagine you've not Learned much about how death penalty trials work in law school?
Troy Hendrickson [:No, not at all.
Steve Palmer [:Look at it like a two phase process. And I'm not saying every jurisdiction is the same. I've given a big picture summary and I did poke around and reviewed some of the Utah law. The first stage, we might call it a guilt phase, and defense lawyers hate that because the terminology presumes guilt. So the believers would say it's an innocence phase. But at the first trial, it's like any other trial. The prosecutor has to prove the person guilty of the underlying crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That's where they bring in evidence, they bring in testimony, they do whatever.
Steve Palmer [:So you have to go through that process. Let's go through the guilt phase. The prosecutor's going to have to bring in evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt out. If the jury finds the defendant not guilty, you don't go to part two. There is no part two. You walk away like any other case. But if the jury finds the defendant guilty of some of the crimes that aren't death specifications, in other words, they find the defendant innocent or not guilty rather of having the kids around or having other people around, whatever the death specs are here, then that would sort of eliminate phase two. Now what's phase two? Phase two is the death phase, the penalty phase.
Steve Palmer [:There the prosecutor has to endeavor to prove that since the jury has convicted the guy, the defendant, of crimes that qualify for the death penalty, now we have to figure out whether the death penalty is appropriate. And this is where things get difficult. You know, this is where advocates against the death penalty sometimes chime in, me included at times, because you have to decide who lives and dies. Two people committing the same act, you get to the death penalty and then you have to decide, well, if this guy did it, he lives. If this guy did it, he dies. It's tough. And a jury has that call. The jury gets to make the call.
Steve Palmer [:And there are aggravating circumstances and mitigating factors. They are what you think they are, aggravating circumstances. This is a horrific crime completely without any reasonable motive whatsoever. I say reasonable motive. Not without motive, but without a reasonable one. In fact, the motive might have been sinister to shut somebody's political speech up. Speech you don't like basically being the arbiter of what you think the world should hear. It's a horrific crime.
Steve Palmer [:In front of his kids, in front of his wife, in front of the public, putting a danger everybody else's life that's there. Like you were in the military. Yeah, it's not a con. I mean, look, I'm not saying that was an impossible shot for anybody to make.
Troy Hendrickson [:It's, it's. I mean, but if you miss. Yeah, if you miss. I mean, that's like insanely dangerous.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, not that it's not dangerous for killing Charlie Kirk.
Troy Hendrickson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But the point is, is like, it's.
Troy Hendrickson [:I mean, you're prone. You're at a 120 to 150ish yards. And that's not like the craziest shock, especially with like a scope like that, like iron sights. Like, I feel like I could hit that shot. But. But then you have to just. What if I do miss? Like, what is behind there? In the military, it's insanely strict about the back blast of like everything. Like making sure there's nothing behind target.
Steve Palmer [:That's correct. I'm a hunter. It's the same thing. So look, this is an incredibly horrific crime for all the reasons we're talking about. And this is not to demean the fact that he hit Charlie Kirk in the neck and killed him. Probably. Probably within seconds we'll hear about that too. There'll be medical evidence from medical examiners talking about the damage the bullet did, whether it was actually a ricochet, whether it was a direct hit.
Steve Palmer [:We'll find out. But look, it's a horrific crime, and those are aggravating circumstances. The motive is gross. The crime is gross. It is impossible. It's almost hard to get your head around. I mean, it hit everybody very emotionally. Then you get to the mitigating circumstances, and those would be things you might consider.
Steve Palmer [:He ever been in trouble before? What was his upbringing like? Did he have a rough childhood? And those things can sometimes cut both ways. It's like, if you can say, look, he had every advantage growing up, that's probably not so mitigating. There was no reason for this. If there's a mental health condition at play, or say he had been hijacked by some dangerous ideology or part of a cultist. I've heard that word. Those might be things that we would use as defense to mitigate those things. The defense will get a mitigation expert. The defense will get psychologists.
Steve Palmer [:The defense will get people whose jobs it is to gather such information, get psychological reports, make recommendations, get statements from people who knew him. And if it looks like, and this is the hard part of defending a death penalty case, because you have to do that now, you don't have time later. It's not like you get a few months between the guilt and the Penalty, you have to have that ready. You have to prepare for two trials, one that may never happen. Now often the strategy, and I think it probably, maybe here will be to focus on that second half. We're going to put a lot of eggs and a lot of our time in that basket, but that's the mitigation stage and that's. Those are the things that the defense is going to do. They're going to look for mitigating factors and try to present them.
Steve Palmer [:That's why it's critical if you're defending this guy effectively. You want to get to know him, you want to make sure that you've got the full story, you want to make sure that you've got trust, et cetera. And this will sort of bring us I think to the final thing I wanted to talk about. That is how can you be, how can you possibly represent those horrible, awful people like Tyler Robinson?
Troy Hendrickson [:Someone's got to do it.
Steve Palmer [:Someone's got to do it. And then who should do it? These are questions, this is like the cocktail party question of criminal defense lawyers. How can you possibly represent that person and somebody who you know is this horrific guilty person? You know, my sometimes tongue in cheek answer is you don't get it. The guilty ones are the easier for me because imagine you represent somebody's innocent. The weight that's on your shoulders. Yeah, if you're representing somebody guilty, but that doesn't mean you're going to do less work or try less if somebody's guilty. There are people, there are lawyers who are purely, who are ideologically, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but they are there to fight the cause of death penalty or they're there for the cause of defending people against the system. And that's not bad.
Steve Palmer [:I'm not saying that's bad. There are lawyers who, they don't care about the cause, they do it for money. They're lawyers who do it for their own narcissistic ego and maybe all three at once, I don't know. But there are the folks who go get qualified to do court appointed death work, death penalty work. They have made it, a lot of those guys have made it. Their and gals have made it their life mission to go defend these cases because they are vehemently opposed to the death penalty under any circumstance. And I'm not here to debate whether that's good or bad. It just is.
Steve Palmer [:There are people who don't like the death penalty. There are people who do. I'm not giving you any opinion on that. But there are people who fight it because it's there and really good lawyers who do that. So there are people who are going to be more than willing to represent Tyler Robinson. There are also people who probably aren't even if they're great lawyers, great criminal defense lawyers who may not want to represent Tyler Robinson. Clarence Darrow is a guy that comes to. Comes to mind.
Steve Palmer [:He was like the. Go read about Clarence Darrow. There's a great book. I think it's called for the Defense. But he represented the Leopold and Loeb murder defendants. Or he represented Leopold and Loeb. He represented.
Troy Hendrickson [:Who's Leopold?
Steve Palmer [:Leopold and Loeb are two kids back. I don't remember the date. I think the twenties who decided that they were going to engage in a thrill killing. They killed a kid for no reason other than to see if they could get away with. Was sort of a. It's sort of a turning. I don't want to jump into this topic, but it was sort of this notion, this slippery notion of relative morality like the Ubermensch. You know, we could be guys who kill people and get away with it because we're smart and we're going to abandon our moral compass and create our.
Steve Palmer [:We're going to abandon, like societal moral compass and create our own. And it shouldn't make any difference. There are, you know, it's a bigger topic. But Darrow famously represented the underdog. You know, he would have been a great guy for this. He would have been the guy that would have been picked for this. He would give daylong closing arguments back into time when closing arguments where people had attention spans for such things. But, you know, there are guys out there like Darrow who would do this.
Steve Palmer [:And I don't know who will get appointed. I hope he gets competent counsel and I hope he gets a good defense. I'm not saying that because I want him to win. I'm saying that because I want him to have a good defense. Because if he doesn't get a good defense, if we don't fill the vacuum, if we don't make sure we do this correctly, then we can't be comfortable. One, that society, that our system will continue to operate the way it should, without doubt and making sure people are comfortable that our system works. And two, we don't want it to. We don't want to do it twice.
Well, look, I think we've covered sort of the basics and I think we should come back and do more of this, this as it unfolds. But look, folks, don't fill the vacuum yet with conspiracy theories. That's not the word I'm looking for. But don't assume that the vacuum is empty because there's backdoor nefarious dealing going on. Don't assume that it's not.
Steve Palmer [:Let's just wait and see how it unfolds. Now, that doesn't mean don't ask the questions. Ask all the right questions. I love it. People are asking all the right questions. Keep asking the right questions. And let's force the state, let's force the government to do their job and do it correctly. All right, That's Lawyer Talk, off the Record Special edition.
Steve Palmer [:They don't teach you that in law school. Talking about Charlie Kirk, if you have a question, if you want to follow up, if you have comments, please leave them. We're going to come back regularly on this and keep commenting on it. You can check us out@LawyerTalkPodcast.com and shoot us a question there, too. Until then, we're on the air, but off the record.
