A Utah judge ruled Friday that a prosecutor in the murder case against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk, violated a pretrial publicity order by speaking to the media about the case and will be held in contempt of court.

But Judge Tony Graf declined to sanction the Utah County Attorney’s Office by removing the death penalty option in the case, as Robinson’s lawyers had requested.

The allegations stemmed from interviews Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard gave to TMZ, USA Today, PolitiFact and Fox News. At a hearing earlier this month, prosecutors said that Ballard was responding to misinformation in the press about the case and that they believed a professional rule allowed them to correct the record.

Judge Graf found that while Ballard “did not engage with the media out of a malicious desire to flout this court’s authority or to intentionally taint the jury pool,” statements sharing his opinion on Robinson’s guilt and the strength of the state’s case went beyond what the instructions allowed. 

“Those additional public statements possessed a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the proceedings,” Graf said.

The misinformation Ballard was responding to came from a defense filing, which stated that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been “unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson.” Prosecutors argued the filing had omitted the ATF’s inconclusive findings — that the bullet had also not been excluded as coming from the rifle. 

Tabloid outlets and conspiracist creators ran with that partial framing. A Daily Mail headline read: “Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did NOT match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims.”

Conspiracy theorists then took it further, citing it as evidence Robinson had been framed.

“The ATF in the Tyler Robinson case cannot connect the gun to him,” conspiracist podcaster Candace Owens told her audience. “It is definitive proof that Tyler Robinson is a patsy.”

At the June hearing, Robinson attorney Richard Novak argued that the proper sanction for the prosecution’s “media tour” was to take the death penalty off the table.

“What was going on here was an attempt to influence the jury pool,” Novak said. “That is the remedy that is commensurate with the extreme recklessness and the motives of the state.”

Judge Graf declined in his Friday ruling and said that striking the death penalty would be “grossly disproportionate to the misconduct and legally unavailable in this civil contempt framework.”

A five-day preliminary hearing is set to begin on July 6, during which prosecutors will present evidence and ask Graf to find probable cause to bring the case to trial. Robinson has not entered a plea.

At an April hearing, prosecutors said they planned to present testimony from law enforcement officers, Robinson’s parents and pre-recorded testimony from Robinson’s former roommate and romantic partner, along with ballistics reports, surveillance video, phone and social media data, text messages and Kirk’s autopsy report.

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