FROM NEW YORK POST: Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin will be charged with capital murder Tuesday — starting an expected drive to see him executed by firing squad.
The charges against Tyler Robinson, 22, are set to be announced at 2 p.m. ET, three hours before his first virtual court appearance set for 5 p.m., prosecutors said.
Robinson held “leftist ideology” and was “radicalized” online in the last few years, according to prosecutors accusing him of murdering Kirk, 31, while he debated students at Utah Valley University last Wednesday.
President Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox both called for the death penalty to be on the table for Robinson after Kirk’s assassination.
27 states, including Utah, still allow the capital punishment. In the state, the death penalty is only allowed in cases of “aggravated murder” or murders that knowingly “created a great risk of death” to another person besides the victim or defendant.
Only five states allow execution by firing squad. Utah is one of them.
In June 2010, Utah executed a death row inmate by firing squad on convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner. Five law enforcement volunteers were positioned behind a wall with five slots. They fired their rifles at a white paper target over Gardner’s heart.
According to a journalist who witnessed the execution, as reported by TMZ, four of the five rounds were live and one was a dummy. The volunteers did not know definitively who fired the fatal shot.
Capital punishment cases are rare in Utah, however. Two executions have been carried out in the past 20 years, and inmates spend an average of 34 years on death row, the Post reports.
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