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PROVO, Utah — Graphic videos showing the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk while he spoke to a crowd on a Utah college campus quickly went viral, drawing millions of views.

Now, attorneys for the man charged in Kirk’s killing want a state judge to block such videos from being shown. A hearing was held Tuesday. Defense attorneys also want to oust TV and still cameras from the courtroom, arguing that “highly biased” news outlets risk tainting the case.

Prosecutors, attorneys for news organizations, and Kirk’s widow urged state District Court Judge Tony Graf to keep the proceedings open.

“In the absence of transparency, speculation, misinformation, and conspiracy theories are likely to proliferate, eroding public confidence in the judicial process,” Erika Kirk’s attorney wrote in a Monday court filing. “Such an outcome serves neither the interests of justice nor those of Ms. Kirk.”

But legal experts say the defense team’s worries are real: Media coverage in high-profile cases such as Tyler Robinson’s can have a direct “biasing effect” on potential jurors, said Cornell Law School Professor Valerie Hans.

“There were videos about the killing, and pictures and analysis [and] the entire saga of how this particular defendant came to turn himself in,” said Hans, a leading expert on the jury system. “When jurors come to a trial with this kind of background information from the media, it shapes how they see the evidence that is presented in the courtroom.”

Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty for Robinson, 22, who is charged with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 shooting of Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem. An estimated 3,000 people attended the outdoor rally to hear Kirk, a co-founder of Turning Point USA, who helped mobilize young people to vote for Donald Trump.

To secure a death sentence in Utah, prosecutors must demonstrate aggravating circumstances, such as that the crime was especially heinous or atrocious. That’s where the graphic videos could come into play.

Watching those videos might make people think, “‘Yeah, this was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel,’” Hans said.

Further complicating efforts to ensure a fair trial is the political rhetoric swirling around Kirk, stemming from the role his organization played in Trump’s 2024 election. Even before Robinson’s arrest, people had jumped to conclusions about who the shooter could be and what kind of politics he espoused, said University of Utah law professor Teneille Brown.

“People are just projecting a lot of their own sense of what they think was going on, and that really creates concerns about whether they can be open to hearing the actual evidence that’s presented,” she said.

Robinson’s attorneys have ramped up claims of bias as the case has advanced, even accusing news outlets of using lip readers to deduce what the defendant is whispering to his attorneys during court hearings.

Fueling those concerns was a television camera operator who zoomed in on Robinson’s face as he talked to his attorneys during a Jan. 16 hearing. That violated courtroom orders, prompting the judge to stop filming of Robinson for the remainder of the hearing.

“Rather than being a beacon for truth and openness, the News Media have simply become a financial investor in this case,” defense attorneys wrote in a request for the court to seal some of their accusations of media bias. Unsealing those records, they added, “will simply generate even more views of the offending coverage, and more revenue for the News Media.”

Prosecutors acknowledged the intense public interest surrounding the case but said that does not permit the court to compromise on openness. They said the need for transparency transcends Robinson’s case.

“This case arose, and will remain, in the public eye. That reality favors greater transparency of case proceedings, not less,” Utah County prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Defense attorneys are seeking to disqualify local prosecutors because the daughter of a deputy county attorney involved in the case attended the rally where Kirk was shot. The defense alleges that the relationship represents a conflict of interest.

In response, prosecutors said in a court filing that they could present videos at Tuesday’s hearing to demonstrate that the daughter was not a necessary witness since numerous other people recorded the shooting.

Among the videos, prosecutors wrote, is one that shows the bullet hitting Kirk, blood coming from his neck and Kirk falling from his chair.

Brown and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press.

ICE agents in California detained several residents, including a US citizen, amid a surge in immigration raids under the Trump administration. Protests under the ‘ICE Out of Everywhere’ campaign erupted across southern California, where demonstrators faced arrests and injuries.

Verified videos emerging from Iran show bodies piled up in a hospital, snipers stationed on buildings and CCTV cameras being destroyed, following the unprecedented crackdown on protests earlier this month.

BBC Verify has been tracking the spread of protests across Iran since they first erupted in late December, but the near total internet blackout imposed by the authorities has made it extremely difficult to document the scale of the state’s deadly crackdown on protesters.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) says it has confirmed the killing of nearly 6,000 people, including 5,633 protesters, since the unrest began at the end of December. It says it is also currently investigating another 17,000 reported deaths received despite an internet shutdown after nearly three weeks.

Another group, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), has warned that the final toll could exceed 25,000.

Iranian authorities said last week that more than 3,100 people were killed, but that the majority were security personnel or bystanders attacked by “rioters”.

The latest videos to emerge from the country are understood to have been filmed on 8 and 9 January, when thousands of people took to the streets following a call for nationwide protests from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah.

They are thought to be the deadliest nights for protesters so far and these newly verified videos show how Iran’s security forces have been violently cracking down on protesters.

Multiple clips analysed by BBC Verify and BBC Persian show bodies piled up inside a mortuary at Tehranpars hospital in east Tehran. We verified the location of the hospital by matching its interior to other publicly available images and videos of the building, and counted at least 31 bodies in just one video. Another clip shows seven body bags laid on the ground outside the hospital’s entrance.

Hundreds of people are seen protesting on a highway in west Tehran in another video before multiple rounds of gunfire can be heard and people begin to scream.

Protesters have also been seen trying to evade Iran’s heavy surveillance infrastructure by disabling CCTV cameras. Footage we verified shows one person in the capital climbing up a post and hitting a surveillance camera several times in an attempt to disable it. A huge crowd of protesters can be seen on the ground and heard cheering as the camera is damaged.

We have tracked the spread of the anti-government protests across 71 towns and cities in Iran, though the true number of areas where demonstrations have taken place is likely far higher.

In the south-eastern city of Kerman a video taken from high up in a building shows several armed men in military uniform walking down a road firing their weapons continuously, though it is not clear who they are shooting at. A small fire burns in the middle of the road while the sound of protesters chanting can be heard in the background.

Snipers have also been recorded on the roofs of buildings. In the north-eastern city of Mashhad verified video shows two men dressed in black on a rooftop of a building in daylight. One man is standing next to a large rifle that is lent against a wall and speaking on the phone. The other man crouches on the floor while smoking.

For most people there has been an almost-total internet blackout since 8 January, but some have managed to briefly access the internet using methods such as SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet and virtual private networks (VPNs).

More videos are likely to emerge in the coming days as the country’s economy has struggled during the blackout.

Additional reporting BBC Persian.