Judge redacts parts of roommate interview as Kirk family calls for transparency
by Pat Reavy ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- The court debated showing Tyler Robinson's roommate's interview video on the third day of his a preliminary hearing.
- Defense objected, citing hearsay and privacy concerns, seeking a redacted transcript as an alternative.
- Judge Graf ruled a heavily redacted version will be shown to the court, balancing transparency with Robinson's constitutional rights.
PROVO — Prosecutors tried to play the much-anticipated video of Tyler Robinson's roommate, Lance Twiggs, in the courtroom on Wednesday.
But day three of Robinson's preliminary hearing, which was previously scheduled to be only four hours, turned into 2 1/2 hours of debate and 4th District Judge Tony Graf's consideration of whether the video interview should be played for the entire courtroom. The drawn-out debate prompted Jeff Neiman, the attorney for Charlie Kirk's family, to address the court for the first time since the hearing began on Monday.
"The Kirk family believes strongly it should be made public for the world to see," Neiman said of the Twiggs video. "To not be transparent here will create doubt and distrust in the judicial system."
After Neiman was finished addressing the court, Erika Kirk, who was sitting in the gallery — as she has been each day of the preliminary hearing — was seen wiping away tears with a tissue. When court was adjourned for the day, Kirk and Charlie Kirk's mother, Kathryn Kirk, stood and had a long embrace.
The third day of Robinson's preliminary hearing was marked by the defense team's objection to the Twiggs video being shown in the courtroom. Robinson faces 10 charges, the most serious being aggravated murder, in the death of Kirk, who was shot and killed on the campus of Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025. During a preliminary hearing, a judge will decide whether there is sufficient probable cause to go to trial on the charges levied against a defendant.
On Wednesday, the Utah County Attorney's Office was prepared to introduce a video interview with Twiggs to the court. Other witnesses have submitted written statements that the court accepted as evidence, but prosecutors say Twiggs' "statement" was recorded. The state also acknowledged that Twiggs was given limited immunity for his statement. The interview was conducted on April 20 at the Utah County Attorney's Office.
But defense attorney Richard Novak objected, contending that the video is more deputy Utah County Attorney Ryan McBride's "statement" than Twiggs', and Twiggs is essentially just agreeing with what McBride says.
"They are not the statements of Mr. Twiggs," Novak said. "It's counsel testifying ... (McBride) is basically testifying to what the exhibits say."
In addition to being inadmissible hearsay evidence, violating privacy rights and portions of the recorded interview not being relevant, Novak argued the defense is very concerned that some of Twiggs' statements will be characterized by the state as Robinson giving Twiggs a "confession" and will violate Robinson's due process rights if they are allowed to be played in court.
Novak further argues that just because some of the text messages Robinson allegedly sent to Twiggs have already been published in other court documents, this is not a "cat out of the bag" situation. The defense argues that it's a matter of upholding Robinson's constitutional right to a fair trial by not republishing information that the media will likely spread and that could taint a jury pool.
The defense offered as an alternative a redacted transcript of the Twiggs interview to be introduced as evidence to the court only. Prosecutors say they had already planned on compromising by playing only the audio of the Twiggs interview, contending that "hearing the tone, the context" of Twiggs' answers is important.
After debating the issue for 45 minutes, Graf spent another 55 minutes in his chambers considering both sides before resuming court and hearing additional arguments. He initially decided that about three minutes of the interview would not be played in the courtroom in either video or audio form. But after Novak raised the constitutionality of playing an alleged confession, Graf redacted an additional 13 minutes of the interview from the courtroom record, saying he is taking a "narrow approach" in balancing transparency against Robinson's constitutional rights.
Graf further stated that "much of this is the text messages" that Robinson and Twiggs exchanged, as well as chats on Discord that Robinson allegedly participated in after Kirk was shot. Those items are also expected to be introduced as evidence by the state, and Robinson's defense team is expected to raise objections to those items as well.
Because the Utah County Attorney's Office needs time now to edit the Twiggs video for the portion that will be allowed to be shown in court, day three of the preliminary hearing was adjourned half an hour early and set to resume Thursday at 9 a.m.
Before Wednesday's hearing focused on the Twiggs video, Brian Davis, with the Utah State Bureau of Investigation, who was the co-lead investigator in the Kirk shooting, took the witness stand. He testified how he was called to St. George, where Robinson had turned himself in with the help of a family friend. A short video with no audio was played for the courtroom showing Robinson, who was wearing a red shirt, dark ball cap, jeans and Converse shoes, walking inside an interview room at the Washington County Sheriff's Office while holding a bottle of water. Robinson mostly had his back to the camera in the short video.
After interviews were conducted with Robinson, his parents and the family friend, Robinson was formally arrested at about 4 a.m. on Sept. 12. He was then transported to the Utah County Jail, where he was booked about 8 a.m. on Sept. 12.
A statement given by Mike Mitchell, the family friend who helped facilitate Robinson's surrender, was also submitted into evidence on Wednesday but was not displayed for the courtroom to read.
At the beginning of Wednesday's hearing, Graf reminded attorneys on both sides that the goal is to complete the preliminary hearing by Friday afternoon.
Photos
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Related topics
Charlie Kirk killingPolice & CourtsUtahUtah County
Pat Reavy
Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.