Utah Was Shifting Away From the Death Penalty. Then Came Trump and Tyler Robinson.

Against a drab cinderblock wall at the Utah County Jail -year-old Tyler Robinson stared into the camera a green anti-suicide vest hanging from his pale frame The hearing held remotely before a district court judge was his first court appearance since being charged with the September murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk who was shot dead in front of a horrified crowd at Utah Valley University Robinson looked impassive nodding slightly as the judge read the charges against him At a press conference two hours earlier Utah County prosecutors had communicated they would seek the death penalty The imperative to execute the killer had been firmly entrenched from the start No sooner was Kirk declared dead than conservative pundits and politicians began calling for blood with the Utah governor issuing a swift warning to the then-unidentified gunman I just want to remind people that we still have the death penalty here in the state of Utah Gov Spencer Cox revealed in a press conference within hours of the shooting The next night Cox established he was working with our attorneys getting everything that we need so that we can pursue the death penalty At the press conference unveiling the state s episode against Robinson Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray insisted that the decision to seek death was one he made independently as county attorney based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime But as with any capital prosecution politics were unquestionably a driving force and in Robinson s incident the pressure came from the top President Donald Trump an ardent death penalty enthusiast was blunt in expressing his desire to see Kirk s murderer sentenced to die In Utah you have the death penalty and a good governor there I have gotten to know him Trump communicated Fox Friends on Friday adding that Cox was intent on seeking death and he should be Utah is far from the first state to feel such pressure to seek executions In his executive order weaponizing the death penalty Trump demanded that states step up their use of capital punishment going so far as to push state attorneys general to seek new death sentences for the men whose federal death sentences were commuted by Joe Biden at the end of his term Related Indiana s Midnight Executions Are a Relic of Another Age Such political pressure has contributed to a renewed embrace of capital punishment on the right including a dramatic spike in executions during Trump s second term In alone executions have been carried out across U S states with more executions scheduled through the end of the year Although the death penalty is still animated by state politics MAGA-aligned governors and attorneys general have just now revived and ramped up the death penalty in states such as Indiana and Louisiana which both in the past few days restarted executions after a -year pause In non-death penalty states like New York and Colorado federal prosecutors have sought the death penalty in high-profile and little-known cases alike Cox who has been largely silent on the death penalty during his tenure spent years growing a reputation as a moderate Republican He only lately refashioned himself as a Trump loyalist surprising supporters by endorsing Trump last fall in advance of his own reelection Once a critic of Trump s role in the January insurrection Cox wrote a letter to Trump following the assassination attempt in Butler Pennsylvania You maybe don t like me much Cox wrote But I want you to know that I pledge my advocacy The Utah governor has also abandoned his previous image as a conservative who had distanced himself from his party s dehumanizing rhetoric and politics targeting transgender people In Cox vetoed a bill seeking to prevent trans athletes from participating in youth sports writing in a lengthy declaration that while he was learning so much from our transgender society he was still struggling to understand the science When in doubt however I inevitably try to err on the side of kindness mercy and compassion But the state legislature voted to override Cox s decision and the following year Cox signed a ban on gender affirming care for trans youth With right-wing Republicans already bent on linking mass shootings to so-called transgender ideology Robinson s alleged relationship with his roommate who Cox described as transitioning from male to female is now being treated by conservative media as a central component of the crime Although Gray the Utah County attorney disclosed he did not wish to speculate about Robinson s motive the theory laid out by prosecutors is largely aligned with the narrative peddled by the right the story of a young man from a good conservative family radicalized by pro-LGBTQ forces who sought to silence a warrior for free speech and traditional values Charlie Kirk was murdered while engaging in one of our bulk sacred and cherished American rights the bedrock of our democratic republic the free exchange of ideas and a search for truth understanding and a more perfect union Gray informed reporters before announcing the charges against Robinson According to the state s theory which is based on interviews with family members and Robinson s roommate Robinson shot Kirk with a rifle that once belonged to his grandfather which he wrapped in a towel and hid in a wooded area near the college campus He later allegedly texted his roommate Drop what you re doing Look under my keyboard The roommate located a note reading I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I m going to take it Urged why he did it Robinson wrote I ve had enough of his hatred Selected hate can t be negotiated out Whether the state s evidence against Robinson ultimately withstands scrutiny remains to be seen Whatever Robinson s motive a death sentence will rely on proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he intentionally or knowingly killed Kirk under circumstances that created a great liability of death to others Perhaps more hard it will also require a unanimous vote by a jury willing to take the life of a young white man with a Mormon upbringing who is likely to remind several Utahns of their own family The story of his parents decision to turn in their own son may well generate compassion among jurors who may be reluctant to further punish a family whose life has been ripped apart And while the current outrage over Kirk s murder makes it easy to imagine Robinson being sent to death row in a red state like Utah the reality on the ground is more complicated It was not that long ago that Utah was making headlines as an unlikely leader in the death penalty abolition movement In the Utah County attorney Gray s predecessor and electoral rival informed that he would no longer seek death sentences part of a larger turn against capital punishment among conservatives in the state The following year a high-profile push to abolish the state s death penalty failed in committee by just one vote Among those leading the charge at the time were politicians like Utah state Sen Dan McCay who advised local news outlets that the death penalty sets a false expectation for society sets a false expectation for the vic tims and their families and increases the cost to the state of Utah Multiple studies of Utah s death penalty system have discovered the price tag of Utah s death penalty system to be shockingly high especially when set against a life sentence If Kirk s murder has not shifted the views of previously outspoken conservatives it has certainly provided a disincentive from reminding anyone of their abolitionist stance McCay who did not respond to repeated messages about his position on the death penalty has spent the past week vocally raising money to install a statue of Kirk on the UVU campus Related A Push to Repeal the Death Penalty Gains Ground Across the Western United States But behind the scenes the cost of death penalty prosecutions has made Utah prosecutors less and less willing to seek new death sentences a trend that is familiar across death penalty states Juries have also proven less inclined to send defendants to death row Indeed Utah prosecutors have not won a new death sentence since At present there are four people on Utah s death row Conservative opposition to the death penalty has also been rooted in frustration over the decades it takes to carry out executions Utah went years without carrying out an execution until when a Native American man named Taberon Honie was executed for a murder committed in Last month the state Supreme Court stopped the planned execution of Ralph Menzies sent to death row for a murder that took place in Lawyers for Menzies have described their client as having progressively worsening dementia which should exempt him from execution He s tethered to an oxygen tank uses a wheelchair is confused and disoriented and no longer understands why Utah is trying to kill him For families on both sides of such cases a death sentence only serves to drag out a traumatic ordeal In Menzies s affair the son of the victim compared it to a miserable merry-go-round telling the press last year that he was getting close to giving up If the judge in the episode were to decide Menzies is not competent to be executed he noted at the time We re done battle over I don t have any more fight in me Other casualties family members have turned against the death penalty fully Sharon Wright-Weeks whose sister and niece were murdered in became one of the the greater part vocal supporters of Utah s previous abolition efforts calling capital punishment a counterfeit promise For relatives of the condemned like Randy Gardner an anti-death penalty activist whose brother was executed by a Utah firing squad in Kirk s assassination is a devastating setback to years of progress against capital punishment which had already been rolled back by conservatives blinded by Trump and MAGA as he wrote in a text message But Kirk s killing Gardner announced has opened up a Pandora s box This is not just true in Utah On the same day that prosecutors informed the death penalty against Robinson lawmakers introduced rule to expand the death penalty in Ohio a state that has not executed anyone since The bill would make politically motivated killings punishable by death We must honor Charlie s memory not with silence but with action declared one of the sponsors Republican state Rep Josh Williams who also happens to be running for Congress Politicians in other states will undoubtedly follow suit Meanwhile Robinson faces a long road to trial let alone execution With so much heated rhetoric and publicity surrounding the assassination including incendiary statements by the governor FBI director and president himself the incident may well become bogged down by defense challenges arguing with good reason that Robinson s right to a fair trial has been violated again and again As the majority of visceral reactions to Kirk s murder subside the reality of the death penalty will emerge sooner or later In Utah it may exclusively be a matter of time before conservatives are forced to remember why they began turning against capital punishment in the first place The post Utah Was Shifting Away From the Death Penalty Then Came Trump and Tyler Robinson appeared first on The Intercept