Utah District Judge Tony Graf ruled Monday that jury selection in Tyler Robinson’s capital murder trial will begin June 21, 2028, which is 1,015 days after Charlie Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. The date lands between what the two sides asked for but nowhere near the middle of it: it is 142 days after the start prosecutors proposed and at least 375 days before the one the defense wanted.
Prosecutors had proposed starting January 31, 2028, according to NBC News, and the defense had asked for the third quarter of 2029, which opens July 1. Measured from the prosecution’s date toward the defense’s, Graf traveled about 27 percent of the distance, and the true midpoint of the two requests falls in mid-October 2028. Robinson, 23, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder and six related counts and is presumed innocent, and prosecutors filed notice in September 2025 that they will seek the death penalty, which is why everything after the charge takes so long.
Graf Moved the Prosecution’s Calendar Five Months to the Right
The number of days he reserved is the sharper tell. Graf set aside 105 court days. In scheduling filings that KUER reported on October 23, the Utah County Attorney’s office said it needed 85 days of trial, which it described as 17 full five-day weeks at six hours of court time a day, plus no more than 20 days to seat a jury. Eighty-five plus 20 is 105. The defense had asked for six to seven months for each phase of a capital trial and as much as two months for jury selection. By our count, start the prosecution’s plan on its own proposed date, run it five days a week with no holidays, and the 105th court day is June 23, 2028, two days after Graf’s jury selection now begins.
Graf’s order, as NBC quotes it, does not say whose estimate he adopted, and the match could be a coincidence. The effect is the same either way, and his stated reason for the schedule is this:
Given Mr. Robinson’s current status, unnecessary delay remains a serious concern.
He also pointed to the volume of evidence, which NBC describes as tens of thousands of files including about 8 million digital artifacts and roughly 3.3 terabytes of data, and to the need for a thorough vetting of jurors. Those are real reasons for months of preparation on both sides, and they are the strongest part of the order.
What 105 Court Days Means on the Calendar
Court days are not calendar days, and Graf has not said how he will spread them. At five a week, 105 court days is 21 weeks, which from June 21 runs through November 14, 2028, a week after the presidential election on November 7. That count ignores every court holiday, so it is the earliest the proceeding could end if it never paused. KUTV described the trial as lasting about four months, which would end around October 21, and a four-day week would push the finish to December 20. On those numbers the end of the proceeding could fall anywhere from about two weeks before Election Day to about six weeks after it.
We would not move a murder trial around a campaign calendar, and Graf should not either. But a case built on the killing of a political activist may reach its jury inside the closing weeks of a presidential race, and the court should plan for what that does to jury selection and security before June 2028, not during it.
Thirty-Three Months Is Long, and It Is Not Unusual
Kirk family attorney Jeffrey Neiman told the court, in NBC’s account, that a trial “in the summer of 2028, three years after Charlie’s assassination, does not feel very speedy to the Kirk family,” and added that the family would accept the date. The wait is 33 months, and it sits inside the range of other recent capital prosecutions that drew national attention, though two cases are not a dataset. Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty on July 2, 2025, 962 days after the killing of four University of Idaho students and a few weeks before his trial was expected to begin. Robert Bowers’ federal trial for the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre began jury selection on April 24, 2023, 1,640 days after the attack. Robinson’s 1,015 days lands between them.
We think Graf got the date right and the defense’s request wrong. A capital case with this much evidence needs time, but a start in the third quarter of 2029 would have put the trial nearly four years after the shooting in a case where, after a five-day preliminary hearing, Graf already found enough evidence to proceed. A conviction hurried into 2027 would be the one most likely to unravel on appeal, and political violence is an attack on the democratic process whose proper answer is a verdict that survives review.
What should happen next is unglamorous. Graf should publish pretrial deadlines for discovery, expert disclosures and motions now, so a June 2028 date cannot erode quietly, and the monthly status conferences that begin January 14, 2027 should be where each missed deadline is named on the record. Everyone in this case asked for a different date. The one that matters is the first deadline that moves.