You don’t have time for three hours of doomscrolling, twenty half-baked takes, and some guy online screaming READ THE THREAD. We are Front Page Detectives, this is your morning Drive-By, and here is what is real.
Supporters are gathering at Utah Valley University today while the man accused of killing the conservative activist prepares to face a jury.
One year ago today, Charlie Kirk was shot dead in front of a crowd at Utah Valley University. Twelve months later, the case against the man accused of killing him is moving toward trial.
Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot at about 12:20 p.m. on September 10, 2025, while answering questions during a student event on the Orem campus. Earlier this month, Fourth District Judge Tony Graf ordered Tyler Robinson to stand trial on all seven counts against him, including aggravated murder, firearms offenses, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Robinson immediately pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors presented evidence during the preliminary hearing that included DNA recovered from a rifle and what they described as a text-message confession. A pretrial conference is scheduled for October 23, when trial dates are expected to be set.
Meanwhile, Kirk’s political allies are marking the anniversary with a memorial at UVU and by circulating an eerie 2013 post in which he wrote: “Good men must die, but death can’t kill their names.” Kirk built a career on deliberately provocative politics that made him a hero to supporters and deeply divisive to many others. Whatever anyone thought of him, the question now belongs in a courtroom: whether prosecutors can prove Robinson murdered him.
Hot Take: Death has a way of polishing reputations. Kirk was not some universally beloved martyr before the gunshot, and an anniversary should not require pretending otherwise. But assassination is not political argument. Somebody fired a rifle, a man died, and now the evidence gets its day under fluorescent courtroom lights.
Read more
The convicted gang leader insists his old confessions were lies protected by a federal immunity agreement and predicts higher courts will overturn the verdict.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis says he expects to walk free on appeal despite being convicted of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur.
Davis told The Hollywood Reporter he is “not worried” and claimed authorities violated his civil rights by prosecuting him after he previously received federal protection while cooperating in an unrelated drug case. He now says the admissions that became central to the prosecution were fabricated to secure that deal and were later repeated in interviews and his memoir because they made him money.
Davis also claimed he avoided testifying because his attorney feared it would damage his appellate prospects. One complication: despite saying an appeal had already been filed before trial, Judge Carli Kierny told him after the verdict that an appeal must wait until sentencing. That hearing is scheduled for October 13, and Davis faces life in prison.
Hot Take: Keffe spent years selling the story that put him inside the Cadillac. Now that a jury believed him, he says the whole thing was fiction. That is a difficult genie to stuff back into the bottle.
Read more
The convicted killer now claims his former lawyers coerced him into admitting the four killings to avoid a possible death sentence.
Bryan Kohberger’s family is supporting his attempt to withdraw the guilty plea that spared him from execution for murdering four University of Idaho students.
Family attorney Jason Goldman says Kohberger’s parents and sisters remain behind him as he argues that his former defense team pressured him into accepting the agreement. Kohberger pleaded guilty to killing Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Ethan Chapin, who were stabbed to death in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. He is serving four consecutive life sentences without parole.
Kohberger now publicly maintains his innocence and claims he was falsely advised that ordinary life imprisonment would provide significantly better conditions than death row. He is also seeking to disqualify Judge Steven Hippler, who sentenced him in July 2025, and wants a change of venue. His next hearing is expected next month.
Hot Take: A guilty plea bought Kohberger his life. Now he wants the confession back too. Courts tend to take a dim view when defendants try to return a plea bargain after keeping its biggest benefit.
Read more
The disgraced attorney will face a new jury in Sumter County when prosecutors again try to prove he murdered his wife and son.
Alex Murdaugh’s second murder trial will take place in Sumter County after a judge ruled that returning the case to the area where he was originally convicted would risk an unfair proceeding.
Judge Debra McCaslin selected the new venue after previously barring the retrial from anywhere inside South Carolina’s 14th Judicial Circuit. The new courthouse is about 80 miles from Colleton County, where Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at the family’s hunting estate.
The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned those convictions earlier this year because of what it called “shocking jury interference” by the former court clerk. The retrial is scheduled to begin April 5, 2027. Murdaugh remains imprisoned regardless after admitting extensive financial crimes and receiving separate state and federal sentences. He continues to deny killing Maggie and Paul.
Hot Take: Murdaugh got the rarest commodity in criminal court: another shot. This time prosecutors will have to win without the shadow of a meddling clerk hanging over the jury room.
Read more
Her account complicates claims that the lone holdout irrationally blocked an otherwise united jury and reveals how aggressively deliberations changed minds.
A fourth Lindsay Clancy juror has come forward with an account that sharply complicates the emerging story of one unreasonable holdout ruining an otherwise settled acquittal.
The anonymous juror told CBS Boston she entered deliberations believing Clancy was criminally responsible for strangling her three children and admitted she “maybe still” believes Clancy is guilty in some sense. She ultimately joined the 11 jurors favoring acquittal by reason of insanity, but said “big personalities” dominated deliberations and that the holdout was not the only person unwilling to abandon deeply held views.
Crucially, she defended the unidentified juror who refused to acquit, saying most of the room had been trying to sway him “from the very beginning.” She also described Patrick Clancy’s unreleased 911 call after discovering his children as so horrific that she would “never be the same.” Clancy now faces a potential retrial after the 11-1 deadlock produced a mistrial.
Hot Take: So much for the neat tale of eleven enlightened jurors versus one obstinate fool. One of the eleven started out thinking Clancy was guilty and says she may still believe it. The jury room sounds less like consensus than pressure, shouting and exhausted people being ground down until only one refused to move.
Read more
