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The Epstein Chronicles
Transcripts From The Hearing Dealing With Tyler Robinson’s Courtroom Appearance (Part 1) (7/24/26)
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The October 24, 2025 hearing centered on Tyler Robinson’s request to appear at future court proceedings in civilian clothing and without restraints. His attorneys argued that routinely presenting him in jail clothing and shackles would undermine the...
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What's up, everyone? And welcome back to the program. In this episode, we're going to begin taking a look at the transcripts from the Tyler Robinson hearing that was held on October 24, 2025. Case number 251-403-576, State of Utah, plaintiff, first, Tyler James Robinson, the defendant. The court is now in session, calling case 251-403-5576, state of Utah, first, Tyler James Robinson. Counsel, would you please enter your appearances? Mr. Ballard. Your Honor. Christopher Ballard on behalf of the state. Also here is Jeff Gray, the Utah county attorney. Chad Grunader, David Sturgel, Ryan McBride and Lauren Hunt, also all representing the state. And then also Mr. Ben Van Noy from the Utah county attorney's office. He's representing the Utah county sheriff's office. The court thank you. Good afternoon to you all. Ms. Nestor. Good afternoon, your honor. Kathy Nestor, Richard Novak and Stacy Visser here on behalf of Mr. Robinson, who is seated to my left, the court thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Robinson. Good afternoon to you as well. All right, counsel, we have a few matters to deal with. I appreciate your ability to make yourselves available after receiving the motions. I wanted to have a hearing in order for all sides to fully vet out, and it's my anticipation, and I'm not sure if we've confirmed, but I plan to make an oral ruling on Monday at 1. I wanted to take the weekend to consider the arguments, review all the memos, all the filings, and put that together. So I appreciate your patience for that. I really want to give these important issues as much time as needed in order to make a good decision with that. Counsel, how would we like to proceed for defense, you filed the original motion, and so I want to make sure that we pick the path that's organized and it's easy to follow for all sides. Mr. Novak, who's a lawyer for Tyler Robinson. Thank you, your honor. Richard Novak for Mr. Robinson. And there have been some related, partially briefed, fully briefed issues that relate to the primary motion, which relates to shackle or shackling. The first thing we did want to ask the court to do is to direct the sheriffs to make one of our clients hands available so that he can take notes during the hearing. We have provided him with paper and pen, and I can tell the court that after spending two hours in a room with Mr. Robinson today, I can't imagine any reason why he can't take notes during the hearing, and there's no reason why that would jeopardize his safety or the safety of anybody else. So we think to start the hearing, we need to at least begin with a minimal level of unshackling, and he is not able to write or take notes during what we anticipated could be an extended hearing, and we'd like him to be able to do so. Question. It's a sealed hearing. The public's not here, so we just can't imagine any specific reason why the court can't have one of his hands free for writing. The court all right. The State. Do you wish to be heard on this, Mr. Van Noy? Yes. Ben Van Noy, Utah County Attorney's Office. Given the substance of the motion, I would object on the sheriff's behalf. This is the heart of what we're trying to decide. This is a pretrial proceeding, redacted, but we would request that that be denied, as it should be in all pretrial hearings. Thank you. The court. Any further input, Mr. Ballard? No, you, Honor. The court. All right, is there a way to unshackle one hand for him to be able to write that doesn't compromise the rest? Bailiff redacted the court. All right, let's go ahead and proceed with that, Mr. Novak. Thank you. And your Honor, while we're waiting, I don't care if this is on the record. I have a really bad sore throat, so if I put something in my mouth, it's not gum and it's not candy. Okay, but if anybody wants a Rocola, I'm happy to share them. The court all right, Mr. Novak, thank you. The court. Depends on the flavor. Mr. Novak. It's original. The court. Okay, some of them are nasty. Novak. No, I don't like any of that stuff. The court all right. And before we begin, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page on the issues that we're addressing today. Mr. Novak, if you wouldn't mind just touching on the topic that you anticipate presenting and I want to make sure that we're all in sync with what's being presented from both sides. Mr. Novak. Agreed, your honor. And I appreciate the invitation to sort of do the roadmap. So, on behalf of Mr. Robinson, we filed a motion to permit him to appear in civilian clothing and without restraints at all hearings. That motion is fully briefed, and we understand that's the primary reason why we're here today. Obviously, the court knows that we interpreted part of the state's opposition as a motion to actually limit the types of appearances at which Mr. Robinson would appear in person. And we treated that, even though it was designated or wasn't designated as a motion, as. As a motion, and we filed an opposition to that. The state has not filed a reply. I don't know if that's just because of timing or if they don't. If the state doesn't intend to file a reply. So that may be a question for counsel for the state. But we also filed a motion to strike the state's opposition to our primary motion because we believe it's impermissibly a pleading filed by a non party. The motion to strike is fully briefed, and in fact, Mr. Nestor is. Is going to argue the motion to strike if the court is prepared to hear the argument on that. So I can go a little bit further down the road of what other issues we think are connected with these. And also, just so the court knows, counsel for the parties met before the hearing about, I think, the other motion that is partially briefed and some other motions that the parties plan to file in the near future. And we actually wanted to talk to the court about our proposed sort of briefing schedule for that and when we might have a hearing, depending on the court schedule. So it's not super linear. Right. That's a little bit of complexity there. The court. Sure. Mr. Novak, do you want me to mention how. Mention the other slightly related motions now, or do you want to deal with that later? The court. Let's do that. So it's all out there, and we can see the trajectory of where we're going. Mr. Novak. Okay, so I think two issues that relate most squarely to our primary motion to appear is civil civilian clothing and without restraints are one, a motion that we intend to file on behalf of Mr. Robinson to completely eliminate all video and audio broadcasting or delayed feeds of court proceedings. And we haven't briefed it. We're not going to argue it today unless the court decides it wants to hear a prelim argument. But the parties have discussed the fact that we're going to bring that motion, and I think we will bring that motion regardless of the ruling of the, of the court on Monday on the shackling civilian clothing issue. Okay, so that's one. The second is this court's sua sponte pre trial and trial publicity order, which the state has informed us they're going to seek both a modification and clarification of. And we were also, even before we knew that, we're going to move the court to modify it. And the reason why we believe that these are all related to each other is because we, meaning Mr. Robinson and his defense team, are very concerned that the nature, content, scope, pervasiveness of pre trial publicity of the statements that have already been made by law enforcement officers, by lawyers, by the representatives of the state in the case may have a significant impact on the fairness of his trial. And so modifying the pre trial publicity order, addressing the cameras in the courtroom, and frankly addressing the individualized propriety of shackling in the courtroom, all really relate to the fairness of the proceedings. There are two other reasons why shackling, we believe is the current shackling protocol and practice with respect to Mr. Robinson unconstitutional. But those don't relate directly to the fairness of the proceedings in the traditional sense. There's another motion which we've also discussed with counsel for the state, and they're well aware that we're going to do this. And this is the motion to actually disqualify the the Utah county attorneys from representing the state in the prosecution of the case.
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If the Utah county attorneys want to represent the sheriff as an entity for security purposes, that's a different issue. We're focused on whether there is a conflict of interest and we are in a sealed hearing, correct? Your Honor, the court. Yeah. Mr. Novak. Okay, so I'm not trying to pre argue the issue, but the Utah county attorneys have advised us that a family member of one of the attorneys was present at the incident at which Mr. Kirk was shot and killed. That this child. I don't know if they're an adult, but I'm not referring to them as a minority. This child was present, observed. It was within 85ft of Mr. Kirk when he was killed. Had to flee, that the Utah county's attorney's office was all advised of this, that law enforcement were actually deployed to the area with her safety and status in mind. I'm not trying to pre argue this, your honor, and I'm not saying anything that we haven't already discussed a couple times with counsel for the state. So we're going to file that motion to disqualify and all of these motions. We've already talked about getting them all filed before Thanksgiving. That doesn't mean that we want the court or anybody else to work over the holidays, but there's a lot of work there. And so we need, you know, a few weeks to get all that done. The court may have some preferences for how those motions are triaged, if I may. But those are the things sort of circling around today's motions, and I think I should stop talking here. The court. All right, I'll. All right. To the state. I just want to make sure that from your perspective, that the same understanding of what we're addressing today, I just don't want to go down the path and then one side says, wait a second. I thought we weren't going there. I just want everyone to start at the same starting point. Mr. Ballard, that's perfect. Your honor, with respect to what's at issue today, we agree. The motion to strike, the state's response, the joint response of the state and sheriff's office, and then also the substantive motion about clothing and restraints. The state did not make an affirmative motion in its response, and so that's why the state has not filed a separate reply. So. And I'll explain that later during my argument. But from the state's perspective, those two motions are fully briefed, ready to go for the court today. As far as the three motions that counsel mentioned, I think that's all the state's understanding as well, that that those will be filed. We'll do our best to respond expeditiously. We're very interested in getting a prelim hearing set in this case as soon as possible. And we were anticipating that once we get those motions resolved or at least argued, then we can move forward with setting a prelim hearing date. There are two other motions that I think the court should be aware of that are docketed. There is defendant's motion to preserve evidence. That's docket number 75. The court entered a premature order on that motion. That's docket number 107. And the state has filed a motion to set aside that premature order. That's docket 116. The defendant's response to that motion is due in early November. And then from our perspective, the defendant. Yeah, defendant. Needs to file a reply in support of the motion to preserve evidence. Mr. Novak, we may be able to meet and confer on the preservation of evidence and. And eliminate adversarial litigation about it. Because I think. And, yeah, I just think that we may be able to do that. We'll try to do that. It's really a question of what evidence needs to be preserved and what advance notice needs to be given to us before biological evidence can be used, even if it might disappear. And so we're going to at least try to meet and confer about it. We may have different definitions of materiality, but we'll do that and do what we can to eliminate things that we maybe can agree upon and not burden the court with another set of briefings. The court. All right, I appreciate that. Anything else, Mr. Ballard? Mr. Ballard? No, your honor. Thank you. All right, folks, we're gonna wrap up right here. And in the next episode dealing with the topic, we're gonna pick up where we left off. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.
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