BREAKING: Utah prosecutors ask for Jan 2028 trial date for Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson—defense wants to delay until 2029

The defense's request would mean the trial of Robinson would not start until around four years after Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University. Judge Tony Graf will be deciding the trial's start date in a Friday hearing.

Laying out its timeline, the state said that the parties must exchange a list of fact witnesses by June 14, 2027, and that any additional witnesses be made known no later than 30 days before trial. They said that motions pertaining to the constitutionality of the death penalty, aggravated murder statutes, or capital trial procedures must be filed by February 1, 2027, the state’s response due by March 15 of that year, and defense replies due by April 15. A motion for a venue change must be filed by May 3, 2027. Motions to suppress evidence and other case motions should be filed by July 30, 2027.

The state lays out a timeline for guilty/not-guilty-phase expert witnesses for both parties that begins on July 30, 2027 and ends on October 29, 2027, with evidentiary hearings possibly taking place.

A proposed jury questionnaire should be filed by September 30, 2027, with the questionnaire being sent out to 3,000 prospective jurors on November 5, 2027. Returned questionnaires should be returned by November 19, 2027 under the state’s proposed timeline. They said the final pre-trial hearing should take place January 10-11, 2028, with the trial beginning later that month.

The defense said that it would be “wholly unworkable for this Court to set a single deadline on which all pretrial motions are due,” instead laying out a phased timeline. They lay out nine phases, spanning from the remainder of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027, in which the filing and litigation of “immediate” motions take place, to the second quarter of 2029, in which the jury questionnaire is finalized and sent out.

This is a breaking story.