Utah County grapples with looming legal costs of accused Charlie Kirk killer prosecution, defense

PROVO — Utah County leaders on Thursday further outlined how they planned to pay for the legal costs associated with the prosecution of Charlie Kirk’s accused killer in a capital murder case.

On Wednesday, the Utah County Commission approved $1 million in additional staffing as it aimed to pay for both the prosecution of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson — who is charged with aggravated murder — and his defense.

County officials said the money would go toward adding two full-time deputy county attorney positions and two full-time paralegal positions.

The county also announced it had retained experienced trial lawyer Kathryn Nester as Robinson’s defense attorney.

On Thursday, County Commissioner Skyler Beltran said the new county attorney hires likely would be needed in the next two to three years to help deal with a growing caseload anyway, but the county was instead adding those positions now.

“We can’t let our other crimes suffer because we’re putting too many resources toward one crime,” Beltran said during an interview with KSL TV. “We need to make sure justice is served to everybody else in the community, so that office needs to maintain their ability to operate normally, and so we needed to give them additional resources for this case.”

Beltran said the county has a “rainy day” fund for conflict counsel that the commissioners planned to tap to pay for the initial $1 million.

He acknowledged the new hires, and likely Robinson’s defense, would require ongoing money, and the commission would wrestle with how to pay for that in the months ahead as the body firms up a 2026 budget.

“We are in the middle of our budget cycle for next year, and we will now need to allocate more than we typically would, so we will see some cuts in other areas, unfortunately, for next year,” Beltran predicted. “I think good budgetary practice is to understand the cost is different now and we probably need to tighten up in other areas.”

Beltran said the county legal defender’s office didn’t have the resources to take on the capital murder case — something echoed by attorney and KSL legal analyst *Greg Skordas, who worked as a consultant to the county on the matter.

“The Utah County Public Defender’s office has every ability to handle death penalty cases — they’re some of the best defense attorneys in the state,” Skordas explained. “They’re not budgeted to do that. They don’t have the resources to do that under the contract they have with the county, so when they get a death penalty case, it’s the only type of criminal case that we farm out, that we give to outside counsel, and so we always look for other attorneys in the community who are willing to take those cases on, on a case-by-case basis.”

Skordas said it was not uncommon for counties to retain outside counsel.

“It happens in every county, and it happens constantly where outside counsel is brought in to handle certain cases,” Skordas said. “They’re paying for indigent services anyway through their public defender’s office, or whatever their budget implies, so there are sometimes conflicts where you will have two people charged in a case and you’ll have the public defender take one and the outside counsel will take another (and) in cases like this where you have a death penalty, where the county budget does not include that for their public defender services.”

*KSL NewsRadio talk show host Greg Skordas is a respected defense attorney. Greg has served in an unpaid consulting capacity for Utah County for several years, helping to ensure appropriate legal representation in complex cases where constitutional rights are at stake, including Capital cases.In the Tyler Robinson case, Greg is not acting as legal counsel for Mr. Robinson, nor is he involved in the investigation or prosecution. His limited role is to assist the County in the formal process of assigning indigent defense counsel something he does as a public service and without compensation.This advisory role is entirely separate from his on-air work at KSL.

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