Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, Steve Palmer here, Lawyer Talk podcast off the record, on the air. We're going to do a different form of question and answer today because I have been getting a ton of questions about the Charlie Kirk case and the Tyler Robinson case, rather the Charlie Kirk assassination Tyler Robinson case. And we did sort of a law school series on that with Troy. He's not here today, but I got a comment I wanted to address first, which this was from Jill3686. Thank you for the comment. I appreciate you checking this out. We'll. Well, Jill took some issue, I think, with our my assessment that the police had fingerprints on the trigger of the gun.

Steve Palmer [00:00:38]:

And she said we can do better than that. I think what you're saying here is that, look, the evidence is Robinson was allegedly wearing a glove at the time, so his fingerprints wouldn't be there. First and foremost, let me say this, I think I misstated that. I think they actually the initial affidavit for probable cause said they had DNA on the trigger of the gun, not fingerprints. I might be wrong, but either way, let me explain what I was talking about when I, when I said that this was not a defense of the government case. It wasn't a defense of anything really. It was just outlining what the government put forth in its probable cause affidavit. And I agree with you.

Steve Palmer [00:01:16]:

So if I'm looking at this from a defense standpoint, a criminal defense standpoint, the first thing I'm going to do is start picking apart the evidence. We all do this. Criminal defense lawyers do this. We look at the evidence and whether ultimately we think we're going to be successful picking it apart, you really can't help it. So you're exactly right. If, if they're going to, if they being the prosecution is going to try to come in and say the shooter's DNA or the shooter's fingerprints are on the firearm and at the same time somebody's, the shooter's wearing gloves, we would have to question whether the fingerprint or the DNA got there as a result of the shooter pulling the trigger in the assassination or whether it got the gun, having belonged to Robinson, got there prior to that. So great, you know, good point. But the point I was making was not that the evidence was airtight, it's just what the prosecution put in its initial probable cause affidavit.

Steve Palmer [00:02:09]:

And to the extent I didn't say it, the next step here is going to be the discovery process and maybe even eventually a full blown sounds like a full blown preliminary hearing or Preliminary examination out there which where the government's going to have to come in with their proof and the defense will have a chance to learn a lot more in that process. So no comments yet on the strength of the evidence, only what it is. If I were involved in the defense of the case, as I would be with any case, we would be exploring all those avenues. Now I guess this will bring us to the other question. I've been getting a lot about this, like who's going to be his lawyers? How does it all shake out? And I've read some articles now that on the Utah criminal defense bar, it's a lot like Ohio is. There are lawyers. If you're going to do court appointed criminal or death penalty defense work, you have to have a certification. In Ohio we call it Rule 20 certification and there's not many of us around that do that anymore.

Steve Palmer [00:03:04]:

I don't keep my Rule 20 certification to do court appointed death penalty work in Ohio anymore because frankly there's just not that many death penalty cases. So eh, you know it. There are pros and cons to it. I'll talk about the cons, and particularly the cons in this case, Kirk's case or the Robinson case. This is going to be a monster. It's going to be a huge undertaking. My guess is well over a year, year and a half of litigation before this thing ever sees a courtroom in trial. It may have pretrial hearings and such, but this is going to be a mess.

Steve Palmer [00:03:37]:

At the same time, you're going to have to deal with the media. You're going to be the celebrity of the day or maybe the black sheep of the day because you're representing somebody that the media seems to not like right now. So this is a big undertaking. It also detracts you from your normal practice. So typically these types of cases are not handled by the sitting full time public defender. These are private lawyers who are appointed and paid by the government to do the case. That means these private lawyers also have their own legal practices. And, and if you're tied up on a case like this, you're not making money on your own legal practice.

Steve Palmer [00:04:17]:

So it's not easy to take this on. And you know, you'd be thinking, well, doesn't the government pay for it? Well, not very much. I don't know what the rates are out there in Utah, but if anybody thinks that there is parity or that if you're court appointed you make a lot of money. You don't, you don't. It's really difficult to run an entire practice on court appointed cases, particularly one case like this, because typically it sucks up a lot of time, a lot of office resources. This is also going to require experts. So you're going to be applying to the court for experts in DNA or fingerprints, whatever the situation would be. Cell phone forensics.

Steve Palmer [00:04:58]:

It looks like that's coming. So this is a hornet's nest. This is a mess. I don't envy those who are going to be appointed to do this job. In fact, I might tip my hat to them because it's hard work and as I said, there's a tax on it. And look, when I say I tip my hat to it, I'm not saying I support the murder of Charlie Kirk. It's not that. But I do support the fact that he has an absolute constitutional right to a defense.

Steve Palmer [00:05:26]:

And if Utah is going to endeavor to seek the death penalty, they better do it right. And that means we can't trust the prosecution to do it right on its own. The only way that this system balances out if you, is if you have a defense or peer pair, probably two defense lawyers who are willing to put in the work and put up the fight to ensure that somehow justice is done here. So just addressing a couple of the questions I had here at Lawyer Talk. If you've got a question, check us out, LawyerTalkPodcast.com you can shoot it in our little interface there. You can just leave us a comment like Jill3686 did today. So off the record, on the air, until next time.