Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was killed on the University of Georgia campus, and the suspect has forfeited his right to a jury trial. At a hearing in Athens-Clarke County on Tuesday, the judge granted the defense’s request for a bench trial for the suspect, Jose Ibarra. Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who will issue a verdict in the case, is set to start the bench trial on Friday.
Many conservatives, including now-President-elect Donald Trump, used her murder as a rallying cry for immigration reform. In a final appeal to voters in the battleground state of Macon, Georgia, on November 3, Trump specifically named her. The case’s jury selection process was supposed to begin on Wednesday.
As Haggard asked Ibarra if he understood the jury trial waiver and whether it was “freely, knowingly and intelligently signed and considered,” Ibarra replied in the affirmative. The defense further stated that they support their client’s choice to forego a jury trial and attested to the fact that a court interpreter had properly translated the form into Spanish for Ibarra. In the well-known case, Haggard rejected the defense’s request for a venue shift last month.
In May, a grand jury in Athens Clarke County indicted 26-year-old Ibarra on charges of felony murder, malice murder, and other counts. He entered a not guilty plea to the accusations. After Riley failed to return from a run on February 22, she was discovered dead in a wooded location on the Augusta University campus in Athens. Ibarra is accused in the indictment of killing her by “inflicting blunt force trauma to her head and by asphyxiating her” and of gravely disfiguring her head by hitting her “multiple times” with a rock.
The 10-count indictment also accuses tampering with evidence, aggravated assault with intent to rape, kidnapping with bodily damage, aggravated battery, and preventing or hindering someone from making an emergency phone call. In the latter charge, it was claimed that he “knowingly concealed” evidence of malice murder, including a jacket and gloves. A case of peeping tom was also brought against him. Riley allegedly spied through the window of another person who lived in a campus apartment on the same day as Riley’s murder, according to the indictment. Additionally, a motion to remove that charge from the case was dismissed by the judge last month.
Ibarra is being held at the Clarke County Jail after being arrested on February 23 and being refused bail. The police have stated that they do not think Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who authorities claim entered the country illegally in 2022, knew Riley and that this was a “crime of opportunity.”
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