Retain A Point-Cloud Expert — The State's Own 3D Scan Of The Scene

:::caution Legal Disclaimer Tyler Robinson is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent. Nothing on this page states as fact that any living person committed a crime, destroyed evidence, or acted improperly. Court filings in this case are subject to a gag order and sealing, so the public record is incomplete by design. :::

The One Thing We Would Do Differently

Move for expert funds for a qualified point-cloud and forensic-mapping expert, for FARO SCENE and Zone 3D licences to read the 660 gigabytes of raw scan data the State produced — and, in the same motion, demand the scan metadata the raw data alone does not supply, starting with the date and time of every scan position.

On 20 July 2026 the defense received a hard drive holding approximately 660 gigabytes of raw "FARO" 3D laser-scan data of the scene. FARO is a laser scanner. It records millions of individual measurement points and those points, once registered together, form a point cloud — a dimensionally accurate three-dimensional record of the surfaces the scanner could see, to millimetre order.

The defense's own 2026-08-28 discovery status report says what arrived and what it is worth as delivered. The production "includes the raw scan data, rather than a finished report or exported images," and possession of it "does not, standing alone, permit counsel to meaningfully assess the scene reconstruction or any measurements, representations, or conclusions derived from it." Reading it needs specialised software — FARO SCENE, Zone 3D — and someone trained to drive it.

That single sentence is the whole argument for this instrument. A point cloud is not a photograph. A photograph shows what a lens saw and settles almost nothing about geometry. A registered point cloud can be measured: the line of sight between any two surfaces, the elevation of one point above another, the angle a line between them makes with the horizontal, the shape and depth of pitting or spalling on hard surfaces, the geometry of the canopy and the tent pad. Those are the exact quantities the State's account of a round fired from the Losee Center roof depends on, and the exact quantities this site's wound-trajectory work says do not close.

The seven things the raw drive does not contain. A point cloud without its scan record is a picture with no provenance. Our motion would name each item and ask the court to order it produced:

The make and model of the scanner, and its calibration record.
The operator who ran it, and the agency that operator worked for.
The date and time of every individual scan position — not the date of the production, the date of the scan.
The number of scan positions and a plan showing where each one stood.
The registration report and its error residuals, position by position.
The registration method — physical targets placed in the scene, or cloud-to-cloud fitting.
Any scans taken at this scene and then excluded from the registered model, and why.

What an expert can then interrogate the model for. Once registered and readable, a point cloud answers questions a photograph cannot settle:

Line of sight and true trajectory geometry between any two points — measured, not asserted — including the roof position the State alleges and the seat.
The elevation and angle relationships the State's account depends on, with a stated tolerance.
Surface damage on hard surfaces — pitting, spalling, directional marking — recorded as shape and depth rather than as a photograph of a shadow.
The geometry of overhead surfaces, the canopy structure and the tent pad, which no ground-level photograph captures usefully.
Whether an observed damage pattern is consistent with a single point of impact or with a radiating pattern from a point source at chest height.
Accurate distances, which is what lets an acoustician and a blast expert do real work instead of estimating off video.

There is a second reason this matters more here than it would in an ordinary case. The courtyard no longer exists in the condition it was in on 10 September 2025. Soil was reportedly stripped and hauled, and pavers reportedly went down on Sunday, 14 September 2025. If the FARO scans pre-date that work, they may be the only dimensionally accurate record of the original surface that will ever exist — more valuable than any photograph, and available to both sides.

What The Defense Team Did Instead

The defense team raised this itself, in writing, on the public docket. The 2026-08-28 status report is the filing that tells the court the FARO production is raw, that it cannot be assessed as delivered, and that "meaningful review of one party's FARO presentation requires the other party to identify and retain a qualified expert with the appropriate software and training." That is the real team naming this need before anyone on this site did, and it should be credited that way.

The same filing says a motion to compel forensic discovery that the FBI and ATF have not provided is being prepared with supporting expert declarations, and that the defense will ask the court on 1 September 2026 to set a briefing schedule for it. That is live movement on the real track, and the hearing is today.

The scale the same filing describes is the reason a point-cloud expert is easy to lose track of. Forty-five productions. 29,237 files. A 12.1-terabyte drive holding 6,425 folders and 613,023 files, six mobile extractions running to roughly 2,915,822 artifacts, fourteen computer images running to roughly 4,887,847 — one of them an encrypted laptop that cannot presently be opened, three of them produced more than once. A Discord return with over 1,000,000 communications. Carrier returns holding at least 25,253 CSLI location records. Another 170 gigabytes from Apple on 18 August 2026, not yet processed. Against that, 660 gigabytes of spatial measurement data is a rounding error in volume and, we would argue, near the top in value.

What is not visible in the material we hold is the next step: no application for expert funds naming a point-cloud or forensic-mapping expert appears in the archive we hold, and no demand for the FARO scan metadata — scanner model, operator, per-position date and time, position count, registration report and its error residuals — appears there either. We hold 374 PDFs against 867 known docket entries, only 258 of which ever had a public PDF, so absence here is thin evidence of anything. The filings in this case are under a gag order and are partly sealed.

One further fact from the certified record, and it is worth stating precisely. We searched both certified transcripts we hold — Day 4 and Day 5 — for FARO, scan, laser, point cloud, 3D, diagram, reconstruction and survey. FARO, scan, laser, point cloud, diagram, reconstruction and survey return nothing at all. The single occurrence of 3D in either transcript is the ATF firearms examiner, on Day 4, saying that a 3D system could be used to visualise individual characteristics on the bullet fragment, that her laboratory does not have that capability, and that she believes the FBI laboratory does. That is about a bullet, not about a courtyard. The State's spatial presentation across those two certified days was a paper map, a witness on her feet with a handheld microphone, and three spoken numbers.

Where This Belongs In The Case

Stage of the case	When that stage runs	Status of this step
Expert funds and Rule 16 discovery	From arraignment onward; the raw data landed 2026-07-20	Need stated on the docket 2026-08-28; funding application not visible
Preliminary hearing cross	July 6-10, 2026 — completed	No FARO reference in either certified transcript we hold
Motion to compel forensic discovery	Briefing schedule to be requested 2026-09-01	Live — being prepared with expert declarations
Rule 702 foundation challenge to any scene measurement	After bind-over, before trial	Not yet due, and so not missed
Trial — defense case	No trial date set; the case has not been bound over	Fully open

Witness Or Discovery Target

How it would be done	Target	Took the stand?	Status on the public record
Expert funds application, then retention	Forensic-mapping / point-cloud examiner with FARO SCENE and Zone 3D	No	Need stated by the defense 2026-08-28; no retention visible
Cross-examination — witness testified about scene measurements	Jennifer Faumuina, SBI crime-scene sergeant	Yes — 2026-07-07 and 2026-07-09	Gave the 415 ft / 410 ft / 68 ft figures; source of those numbers not explored on the certified record
Records demand for scan metadata and registration report	The agency that operated the scanner, through the State	n/a	Not found in the archive we hold
Records demand on courtyard processing	FBI Evidence Response Team — Michelle Cammack was named in certified testimony as ERT lead at the rifle recovery	No	The FBI processed the courtyard; no ERT witness has been crossed

The Questions That Were Not Asked

Addressed to Sergeant Jennifer Faumuina, who testified on the certified Day 4 transcript that measurements were taken from what the State calls the perch to the tent, and gave the figures: approximately 415 feet direct, 410 feet horizontal, and an elevation difference of approximately 68 feet.

Sergeant, those three numbers — 415 feet, 410 feet, 68 feet — what instrument produced them?
Were they taken with a tape, a hand rangefinder, a total station, or read out of a 3D laser scan?
Was a FARO laser scanner used at this scene at all?
On what date, and at what time, was each scan position occupied?
How many scan positions were there, and where was each one set up?
Was the courtyard scanned before the soil was removed, or after?
Was the courtyard scanned before the pavers went in, or after?
Was there a registration report for those scans, and what were its error residuals?
Were the individual scans registered to physical targets, or by cloud-to-cloud fitting?
Were any scans taken at this scene and then excluded from the registered model?
You said the rooftop team documented by "sketching" and photography. Where does a laser scan fit in that sequence, if at all?
You testified the FBI processed the courtyard, and that processing there was "photography as well as just examining the tent area." Did the FBI scan the courtyard, and did you see the result?
Does the point cloud capture the underside of the canopy and the tent pad, or only the ground plane?
If a projectile were lodged in the stage wood at the time of a scan, would that scan have recorded the hole?

A second block, held for the witness who sponsors the model at trial. Whoever the State calls to put a FARO-derived measurement or reconstruction in front of a jury has to lay a foundation for it. These are the foundation questions, and none of them requires us to know anything the State has not already produced.

Did you personally operate the scanner, or are you reading somebody else's output?
Who registered these individual scans into the single model you are showing the jury?
What software performed the registration, and what version?
What is the stated registration error of this model?
Is that error stated per scan position, or only as an overall figure?
Does the measurement you just gave this jury carry that error, yes or no?
Have you produced the registration report to counsel?
Were any scan positions dropped from this model before you ran the registration?
Show the jury the scan-position plan. Which positions could see the surface you just measured?
Is any part of the surface you just measured interpolated rather than directly scanned?
On what date was the surface in this image scanned?
Was that before or after the surface in this image was replaced?

Why A Defense Attorney Would Want This

Day-one date: 2025-09-12. At the initial appearance our attorney would have moved for expert funds and for leave to conduct a defense-commissioned laser scan of the courtyard and the Losee Center roof, and would have served a preservation letter the same day naming the scene surfaces. That window was already closing. Soil was reportedly stripped within about a day of the killing, and pavers reportedly went down on Sunday, 14 September 2025. Even a lawyer standing up on 12 September had roughly forty-eight hours. Nobody gets a defense scan of that courtyard now, at any price. That is the strongest single argument for spending real money on the State's scan instead: it may be the only one there is.

What a defense-commissioned scan would have bought, and why we would have paid for it on day one: independence. Our own scanner, our own operator, our own registration report, our own chain of custody, and a model no one can later characterise as the product of the same agencies whose work we intend to cross-examine. A defense expert reading the State's point cloud is always reading a model built by the other side. A defense expert reading a defense scan is testifying to his own measurements. Those are different witnesses in front of a jury, and only one of them existed for the taking, and only during roughly forty-eight hours in September 2025.

This is also, on its merits, one of the easiest requests a judge in a capital case ever grants. It does not touch classified material. It does not require any federal agency to waive anything. It does not consume, alter or destroy a single item of evidence — a point cloud is read, not tested. It asks for money for an expert and for a log the scanner itself generated automatically. A court that would agonise over a subpoena to an intelligence agency will sign this one.

Three things a retained expert unlocks that counsel cannot get from the raw drive.

First, measurement instead of assertion. The State's spatial case at the preliminary hearing was a witness standing up with a handheld microphone, pointing at a paper map marked Exhibit 35, and reciting three figures. Those figures are testable. Taken at face value, a 68-foot drop over 410 feet horizontal describes a line about 9.4 degrees below horizontal — at the steep end of the 5-to-9-degree band this site's trajectory pages discuss, and a line between a rooftop area and a tent, not a wound track. A point cloud lets an expert draw that line from an actual seat position to an actual roof position and report the real number, with the real tolerance, instead of a courtroom approximation.

Second, the registration-error cross-examination. A point cloud is stitched together from many separate scanner setups, and the stitching has a measurable error. The software produces a registration report stating it. Every measurement anyone offers out of that model — the State's or ours — inherits that error. If the State puts up a scene reconstruction or a trajectory figure derived from a FARO model and does not produce the registration report, that is a straight foundation objection with real teeth: what is the stated registration error of the model this measurement came out of, and who can tell this jury what it is? A witness who cannot answer is reading somebody else's document.

Third, the timing question, and this is the sharpest point on the page. A scan captures the scene as it was on the day it was scanned. So we demand the date and time of every scan position and lay them against the dates the soil was removed and the courtyard resurfaced. Either answer helps us and neither answer can be spun.

If the scan dates fall here	Then the State's model is	And the argument we make
On or before 2025-09-11	A record of the original courtyard surface	The only surviving dimensional record of the scene — produce the finished reconstruction, and explain why it has not been disclosed
Between 2025-09-12 and 2025-09-14	A record of a scene mid-alteration	Which surfaces were already stripped when the scanner ran, and which were not — the model itself dates the excavation
On or after 2025-09-15	A record of an altered scene	Every measurement taken from it describes pavers, not the ground Charlie Kirk was sitting on

If the scans post-date the alteration, the State's own three-dimensional model is a model of an altered scene. It cannot show the original ground plane, it cannot show what was in the soil, and every measurement taken from it carries that caveat into the courtroom. That feeds the spoliation argument directly, and it limits the model for both sides — including ours.
If the scans pre-date the alteration, the point cloud becomes the single most valuable object in the case file: the only surviving dimensional record of the courtyard as it actually was. Then the question is why a record that good has not produced a finished, disclosed reconstruction, and what it shows about the stage, the canopy and the ground.

There is a fourth reason, and it is about Route 2. A judge who would never order a federal agency to answer a subpoena will readily order the State to produce a registration report and a scan log for data it has already handed over. If the metadata comes, we can measure. If it does not come, the jury hears that the State produced 660 gigabytes of measurements and would not say when they were taken. A refusal is also an answer.

The honest limit, stated plainly. A point cloud records geometry. It does not record chemistry. It cannot show explosive residue, it cannot identify a compound, and it cannot by itself tell blast damage from any other damage. Distinguishing a radiating pattern from a point source at chest height from a single point of impact requires an expert opinion layered on top of the geometry — which is why this instrument sits beside explosive residue testing and the blast and acoustics experts, and does not replace either.

The Honest Counterargument

The strongest answer is that the defense is already doing this, correctly, and on a sensible schedule. The status report says review of the provider returns is only at Stage One and the device images at Stage Two, that a single paralegal has averaged 100 hours a month since October 2025, and that 45 productions and 29,237 files are still being processed. A capital team with finite hours does not retain a point-cloud expert in July and file a metadata motion in August; it finishes the forensic-discovery motion it has told the court it is bringing, gets a briefing schedule, and folds the FARO demand into that. The sequencing we describe as missing may simply be sequencing we are watching from the outside.

There is a second answer that cuts harder. Funding a defense expert to read the State's point cloud may help the State. If the model shows a clean, unobstructed line of sight from the roof position to the seat at an angle consistent with the State's theory, the defense will have paid to build the prosecution's best exhibit and will have to live with it in discovery. Some capital lawyers will not spend money on an instrument whose most likely output is a confirmation. That is a real tactical judgment, not an oversight, and we cannot see which way counsel of record has made it.

Third, our timing argument may resolve unhelpfully. If the scans were run on 10 or 11 September 2025 — which is what a competent evidence-response team would do — then the "model of an altered scene" half of the argument disappears entirely, and what remains is a demand for metadata the State may simply produce without a fight.

Fourth, and least comfortable for this page: it is entirely possible that the FARO data, read properly, shows nothing unusual at all. A scanner records surfaces. Fabric, soil and a canopy that were removed, hauled or replaced within days are not going to yield a pitting pattern from a point cloud, and the hard surfaces that remain may carry no interpretable marking whatsoever. An expert may spend the money, read the model, and report that geometry alone cannot distinguish between the competing accounts. That is a real possible outcome and we would publish it. An instrument that can only ever confirm what we already believe is not an instrument, it is a decoration.

Fifth, the State would answer that expert-notice requirements and foundational discovery are excluded from the preliminary hearing by statute — a position it took in writing in this case — so nothing about the FARO model was due to be litigated during those five days in July. On that narrow point the State is describing the rule correctly, and none of the questions in the blocks above were due to be asked at that stage.

Sources On This Site

:::danger Theoretical Exercise Only This page is a theoretical exercise. It is a written simulation of how an idealised defense attorney might approach this case. We make no claim that there is any problem with the current defense attorney, with any member of the defense team, or with any decision they have made.

Real capital defense is conducted under a gag order, with sealed filings, and on the basis of full discovery that the public has never seen. Counsel of record know facts we do not. A step described here as "not on the public record" may already have been taken privately, may have been considered and rejected for good reason, or may not yet be due at this stage of the case. Silence in the public record is not evidence of a failure.

Nothing here is legal advice, a criticism of any licensed attorney, or an allegation of professional misconduct. :::

This website's author is @HolonCitizen on X and YouTube/@HolonCitizen. Follow me there.

The One Thing We Would Do Differently​

What The Defense Team Did Instead​

Where This Belongs In The Case​

Witness Or Discovery Target​

The Questions That Were Not Asked​

Why A Defense Attorney Would Want This​

The Honest Counterargument​

Sources On This Site​