4 days Ago By USA TODAY
Prosecutors continued to make their case Monday in the bench trial of an undocumented immigrant accused of murdering , a case that drew national attention as part of the discussion about immigration, a major presidential campaign issue. Riley, 22, was killed in February while out running on the University of Georgia campus. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan citizen who arrived in the U.
S. illegally two years ago, is charged with malice murder and felony murder, aggravated assault and aggravated battery, among other crimes. Ibarra, 26, declined his right to a jury trial in favor of a bench trial, in which the judge decides the verdict.
Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard on Monday heard the translation of an audio recording of a Spanish-language phone conversation from jail between Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco, CNN reported. In the call, according to CNN, Franco accuses Ibarra of knowing about the killing, questions why investigators only have his DNA and tells him, “What happened with the girl?’’ as Ibarra tries to get her to stop.
, when special prosecutor Sheila Ross said Ibarra had gone “hunting for females’’ at the campus, spotted Riley and intended to rape her but met fierce resistance and “bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly.’’ Prosecutors also presented surveillance video showing a man throwing a blue jacket into a dumpster and said the jacket was recovered and contained the DNA of both Riley and Ibarra, who's not a student at the university. The prosecution has said Ibarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s fingernails and that it also has digital evidence connecting him to the crimes.
Defense lawyer Dustin Kirby said the evidence strongly suggested Riley was murdered but called its link to Ibarra’s involvement “circumstantial,’’ adding, “The evidence that anyone had any intent or certainly committed any sexual assault is speculation.’’ The district attorney’s office has indicated it will pursue life imprisonment without parole but not the death penalty if Ibarra is convicted of the most serious charges. The Feb.
22 killing promptly made its way into the immigration debate, heating up after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia highlighted the attack before and during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address two weeks later, urging Biden to say Riley’s name during his speech. He did, offered condolences to her parents and urged Republicans to get behind a bipartisan border-security bill that died in Congress in February under pressure from former President Donald Trump, then the GOP’s expected nominee and now the president-elect.
Ibarra had been apprehended at the Texas-Mexico border in September 2022 but allowed to stay in the U.S. while making his immigration case, Immigration and Custom Enforcement has said.
Republicans seized on the case as an example of the danger they said Biden’s immigration policies presented, and they beat that drumbeat throughout the presidential campaign even though undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Trump has been particularly insistent that immigrants bring mostly trouble. He referenced Riley's killing during his speech accepting the nomination at the National Republican Convention in July, saying, "Yet another American life was stolen by a criminal alien set free by this administration.
Tonight, America, this is my vow: I will not let these killers and criminals into our country.".
