Suspected Charlie Kirk Assassin Tyler Robinson Adds Lyle Menendez Defense Attorney to Legal Team

The man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk made a virtual appearance in a Utah courtroom for his waiver hearing on Monday, Sept. 29.

Tyler Robinson remained at the Utah County Jail for the proceedings despite Judge Tony Graf signing an order last week requesting that the defendant be transported to the Provo Fourth Judicial District Courthouse and appear in person.

No reason was given for his absence from the courtroom during the hearing.

His three lawyers did appear in court, however, providing a first look at the defense team that he has assembled for his case.

This includes the man who defended Lyle Menendez at his first criminal trial, which ended in a mistrial after the jury was evenly split on the question of his guilt.

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Robinson’s legal team is being led by Kathryn “Kathy” Nester, whose appointment was announced last week.

Nester currently works in the private sector as a named partner at the law firm Nester Lewis.

She is an experienced trial attorney who spent over a decade heading up the Federal Defender offices in both Salt Lake City, Utah and San Diego, Calif.

This is now the second high-profile case that Nester is handling in the state, as she is part of the team of lawyers who were appointed to represent Kouri Richins — the Utah woman accused of murdering her husband with fentanyl.

Nester is not the lead attorney on that case, though, which is set to head to trial as Richins has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Once Nester was appointed as Robinson’s lead attorney, she wasted no time in announcing the two attorneys she hoped to add to her team.

She filed a request with the court asking that Richard Novak and Michael Burt be approved to serve as her co-counsel in the legal proceedings.

Novak and Burt then submitted their own court filings which outlined their experience and some of the more notable proceedings they had been a part of over the course of their careers.

In the case of Burt, it was he who represented Lyle Menendez during his first criminal trial which ended in a mistrial.

The jury in that case was split six-to-six on the guilt of Lyle and brother Erik Menendez, who would later be convicted of murdering their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez at their subsequent murder trial. Burt later oversaw Lyle’s appeal of that conviction before stepping down as his attorney.

Burt also represented Eric Robert Rudolph, the man convicted of killing one person and injuring over 100 others when he planted a pipe bomb at the 1996 Sumer Olympics in Atlanta, and Richard Ramirez, the serial killer known as the “Night Stalker” who murdered at least 15 people between 1984 and 1985.

Novak served as a deputy federal public defender for six years and also worked as a referee for the Los Angeles Superior Court, with a focus on juvenile dependency and delinquency proceedings.

It is unclear how much each of these three lawyers will be paid, but the Utah County Commission did approve putting $1 million towards the trial.

That money will go towards the hiring of two deputy county attorneys and two paralegals for the prosecutor’s office as well as paying for Nester and her team due to Robinson being declared indigent by the court.

In Utah, there are specific requirements that a team of lawyers must meet to represent a defendant in a capital murder trial.

At least one of the attorneys must have: tried to verdict at least six felony cases as defense counsel within the past four years or 25 felony cases total, with at least six of the 25 cases as defense counsel; appeared as defense counsel or defense co-counsel in a capital or a felony homicide case which was tried to a jury and which went to final verdict; completed or taught, in person, at least eight hours of approved continuing legal education which dealt, in substantial part, with the representation of defendants in death penalty cases within the past five years ; five years of experience in the active practice of law.

Robinson’s team meets those requirements, which are put in place to make sure that defendants get adequate counsel so as to avoid the possibility of retrials, which typically tend to be drawn out and much more expensive than other cases.

Novak and Burt were granted a “pro hac vice” allowing the California lawyers to participate in the Utah case, PEOPLE previously reported.