Against a drab cinderblock wall at the Utah County Jail, 22-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 10 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 announced 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 said in a press conference within hours of the shooting. The next night, Cox confirmed 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 case 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 case, 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 told 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 37 men whose federal death sentences were commuted by Joe Biden at the end of his term.

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 2025 alone, 31 executions have been carried out across 10 U.S. states, with 12 more executions scheduled through the end of the year. Although........

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