Lawyers for the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk are expected to keep questioning the reliability of DNA testing used to link the defendant to the suspected murder weapon when a weeklong hearing resumes Wednesday.
A member of Tyler Robinson’s defense team interrogated a DNA analyst from the FBI on Tuesday about the techniques she used to connect Robinson to a towel wrapped around a rifle found at Utah Valley University, where Kirk was shot in September while speaking to a large crowd.
Defense lawyer Michael Burt cast doubt on the analyst’s conclusions — a theme likely to recur during the five-day preliminary hearing.
“She can’t match Mr. Robinson to the questioned samples,” Burt argued.
Deputy Utah County Attorney Ryan McBride countered that the reliability of the DNA testing could be examined if the case goes to trial. He suggested the preliminary hearing — where prosecutors have a lower burden of proof compared with a trial — was not the time to take up the matter.
“The point is there are explanations that are susceptible to different interpretations and arguments,” McBride said. “Ultimately, we’re going to have an expert hearing where all the literature is going to be before the court and the court is going to determine if it meets the threshold of reliability for admission to trial.”
Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty. State District Judge Tony Graf will decide at the conclusion of this week’s hearing if they have enough evidence to bring Robinson to trial on an aggravated murder charge.
Robinson has not yet entered a plea and his attorneys have not commented on his guilt or innocence. They have, however, sought to get the death penalty taken off the table, so far unsuccessfully.
Prosecutors must show they have enough evidence for a trial
FBI analyst Amanda Bakker said after Robinson’s roommate, Lance Twiggs, provided a DNA sample for comparison, she was able to rerun her tests and attribute all of the DNA to two people.
Investigators found the towel and suspected murder weapon — a bolt-action rifle with one spent round — in a wooded area near where Kirk was shot.
This has never made sense to me:
The picture they showed off of the 'rifle recovered in the woods' is... fully assembled, and in a cardboard box.
But they also reported that the weapon was wrapped up in a towel or cloth or something.
But but ... the government story is that Robinson had a half dissambled rifle partially in his backpack, partially in his pant leg... he walks it to the roof with an odd walking cadence, assembles it, fires it, disassembles it, jumps off the roof, flees the scene...
Why the fuck would you then reassemble the weapon?
Where did this cardboard box come from?
And yes, the bullet this weapon fires cannot be the bullet that made the injuries Kirk sustained.
The shooting position that Robinson was supposedly at? That weapon? That range?
Its a 30-06. A straight on shot from the front, from that range, to Kirk's lower neck/upper shoulder area, would have blown a chunk of flesh roughly the size of an orange out of Kirk. The bullet would have kept travelling through Kirk, and potentially injured people standing behind him, it would have made an impact mark on the building/ground behind him. There would have been blood and viscera from Kirk thrown behind him, creating a splatter pattern.
Instead, we get Kirk having the neck geyser in the front, no visible exit wound or blood on the back of his neck.
Instead, we get a statement from a doctor saying that his shoulder/clavicle bones caught the bullet, and that that is a miracle and Kirk has superhuman bone density, that this superhuman bone density saved other people from the scenario I described above.
https://thedailydots.substack.com/p/the-bullet-that-stopped-medical-science
This is... how do you say ... horseshit.
... Kirk does not / did not have superhuman bone density... that bullet / fragments recovered inside of in him is not a 30-06, or even fragments of a 30-06.
Now I don't know who the fuck actually did shoot Kirk, but it wasn't Robinson, even if he had been there, with that 30-06 firearm, at that time, from that shooting position.
Robinson is almost certainly fucked in that he does seem to have been there, with the intention to take the shot, with a 30-06. But he cannot have been the one that pulled the trigger that fired the bullet that ended Kirk.
I can say though, that a 5.56 fired from Kirk's right, above him, that entered into his head/neck roughly under his right ear, that then wormed its way through/around the bulk of his neck vertebrae, that as it is slowing down, severs the left carotid internally, that then comes to a stop in his left shoulder/clavicle bones...
Well that does match with everything about the scene and the videos/photos of Kirk's death.