ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — A Venezuelan man has been convicted of murder in the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, a case that fueled the national debate over immigration during this year’s presidential race.
Jose Ibarra was charged with murder and other crimes in Riley’s February death, and the guilty verdict was reached on Wednesday by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard. Ibarra, 26, had waived his right to a jury trial, meaning Haggard alone heard and decided the case.
Haggard found Ibarra guilty of all 10 counts against him: one count of malice murder; three counts of felony murder; and one count each of kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, aggravated battery, obstructing an emergency call, evidence tampering and being a peeping Tom.
After reading the verdict, the judge said he was ready to proceed with sentencing immediately, but prosecutors asked for a break. The judge said he would proceed after an hour-long break. The penalty for a murder conviction in Georgia is life in prison, either with or without the possibility of parole.
Riley’s parents, roommates and other friends and family cried as the verdict was read. Ibarra didn’t visibly react.
Before announcing his decision, the judge said that as he listened to the closing arguments, he wrote down on a legal pad two things the lawyers had said. He noted that prosecutor Sheila Ross called the evidence “overwhelming and powerful” and that defense attorney Kaitlyn Beck reminded him he was “required to set aside my emotions” in making his ruling.
Riley’s killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case. But there was no mention of Ibarra’s immigration status during the trial.
“Laken Riley herself has given you all the evidence you need” to find Ibarra guilty on all counts, Ross told the judge during her closing. She added that the physical evidence is sufficient and is corroborated by forensic, digital and video evidence to “twist this very powerful knot that this defendant cannot get out of. There is no way out for him.”
The evidence shows that Ibarra killed Riley “because she would not let him rape her.”
Ross said Ibarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s fingernails and her DNA and Ibarra’s were found on a jacket that police found in a trash bin in his apartment complex. A man seen in security footage throwing that jacket away was identified as Ibarra by his brother and another roommate, she said.
Riley was wearing “tight running clothes that are designed not to move,” Ross said. When her body was found, the waistband of her running tights was pulled down and her jacket, shirt and sports bra were pulled up, evidence that her clothes were displaced by an attempted sexual assault not by dragging, Ross said.
Surveillance video shows a man wearing clothes that appear to match those seen in a selfie Ibarra snapped on his phone earlier that morning, lingering outside the apartment of a female graduate student. That student told police someone tried to get in the front door while she was in the shower and peered through her window.
Ibarra was “out prowling and hunting females” and when he couldn’t get in the apartment, he turned to the running trails looking for a victim, Ross said.
Defense attorney Kaitlyn Beck told the judge that the evidence is circumstantial and does not definitively prove Ibarra’s guilt.
“Because the evidence is subject to more than one interpretation, it is not beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said.
Beck tried to cast doubt on a method of DNA testing used to test some of the evidence. She noted that when a fingerprint found on Riley’s phone was entered into a database, Ibarra didn’t come back as a match and that a specialist visually matched the prints.
She said there was “doubt based on what was tested and on what was not tested” because investigators did not test some of the evidence they had gathered.
Throughout their questioning of witnesses and in Beck’s closing, defense attorneys tried to create doubt about Jose Ibarra’s guilt by suggesting that his brother, Diego, could not be excluded as a suspect.
The trial began Friday, and prosecutors called more than a dozen law enforcement officers, Riley’s roommates and a woman who lived in the same apartment as Ibarra. Defense attorneys called a police officer, a jogger and one of Ibarra’s neighbors on Tuesday and rested their case Wednesday morning.
Ross told the judge that Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus on Feb. 22 and killed her during a struggle. Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) east of Atlanta.
Defense attorney Dustin Kirby said in his opening that Riley’s death was a tragedy and called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing. But he said there was not sufficient evidence to prove that his client killed Riley.
Riley’s parents, roommates and other friends and family packed the courtroom throughout the trial.
