Burden of Proof
Defense argument against bind-over
XVII. The Court Must Not Reverse the Burden
- who was on the roof;
- who handled the rifle last;
- whose prints were on the window;
- why Twiggs’s DNA was on the towel or screwdriver material;
- who authored the messages;
- whether Twiggs framed anyone;
- or what alternative sequence occurred.
Those questions remain the State’s burden. The defense is not required to solve the homicide to demonstrate that the State has failed to reliably identify this defendant.
The proper question is: what reliable evidence proves that Tyler Robinson did it?
Conclusion
Your Honor, after days of testimony, the State asks this Court to make the following findings:
- Believe a political motive that the closest witness did not corroborate.
- Identify a rooftop figure whose face and distinguishing characteristics cannot be seen.
- Treat an inconclusive firearms examination as supportive.
- Treat old or transferable DNA on an owner’s rifle as evidence of use that day.
- Ignore mixed profiles and Twiggs’s DNA as ordinary household transfer.
- Discount latent prints that excluded Mr. Robinson.
- Accept a screwdriver scene entered with an unidentified armed badge-holder.
- Accept a photograph of a missing note as a handwritten confession.
- Accept messages from Twiggs’s phone as proof of Mr. Robinson’s physical authorship.
- Accept the interpretations of an immunized witness who was not cross-examined live.
- Accept alleged parental admissions without hearing from either parent.
- Accept an alleged statement to Mike Mitchell without hearing from Mike Mitchell.
- And accept surrender as consciousness of guilt without a recorded admission.
At every critical point, the State asks the Court to infer what its evidence does not establish.
Utah’s probable-cause standard is lower than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not no standard. Rule 7B requires reliable evidence that the defendant committed the charged acts. Source: legacy.utcourts.gov Here, the evidence establishing identity is not reliable enough because every supposed bridge to Mr. Robinson depends upon another disputed assumption.
It did not identify his rifle as the source of the projectile. It did not identify his fingerprints on the alleged escape route. It did not produce the original note. It did not produce a confession to police. It did not call his parents. It did not call Mike Mitchell. It did not subject Lance Twiggs to live cross-examination. It did not call the Cellebrite examiner who performed the extraction. It did not establish through independent device evidence that Mr. Robinson physically authored each alleged message. What the State presented was not a chain. It was a collection of disconnected links held together by the prosecutor’s narration.
And inference stacked upon inference does not become probable cause merely because the alleged offense is grave.
For those reasons, Mr. Robinson respectfully asks this Court to decline bind-over and dismiss the charges.