A United States judge this Wednesday found immigrant José Ibarra guilty of the murder of young nursing student Laken Riley, whose case was used by the campaign of today’s president-elect, Donald Trump, in its rhetoric about undocumented immigrants and crime.
After a trial without a jury that began last Friday, the 26-year-old immigrant of Venezuelan nationality was found guilty of ten criminal charges, including the murder of the university student, and a few hours later he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. .
One by one, Athens County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard found Ibarra guilty of all charges, which also included murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, hindering an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence, among others. , and finally handed down the sentence against him.
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Ibarra, who did not testify during the short trial, listened to the judge while an interpreter translated the court ruling into his ear and amid the sobs of the family and friends of the 22-year-old victim, whose murder occurred on a campus in Georgia last February.
The Prosecutor’s Office did not request the death penalty, but pressed for a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Riley’s murder brought national attention to the debate over immigration, fueled by Republicans, including Trump, who blamed Joe Biden’s Administration for a failed policy on the matter.
The former president today applauded the ruling and stressed in a statement that “it is time to secure our border and expel these criminals and thugs from our country, so that nothing like this can happen again.”
Trump and other Republicans met with Riley’s parents before a campaign rally in March and used the case to call for a tough crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Defense did not rule out that the murderer was the brother
Prosecutor Sheila Ross said during closing arguments Wednesday that Riley fought his attacker and that fight gave them “all the physical evidence they need to convict him.”
Defense attorneys for their part argued that the evidence does not link Ibarra to the murder without a reasonable doubt, and said the defendant’s brother, Diego Ibarra, could have been the killer.
The defense specified that they could not rule out that Diego was responsible or that “José was an accomplice after the murder.” In this sense, he pointed out that the DNA presented was subject to contamination because both brothers shared clothes and a bed.
Riley’s body was found covered in leaves, a little off the trails at the University of Georgia in Athens, where he was jogging. Since the arrest of José Ibarra, which occurred one day after the crime, the immigrant has pleaded “not guilty.”
The case also prompted Republican legislators in Georgia to approve in less than two months a new immigration law that requires police departments and sheriffs to verify the immigration status of detainees and notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE) if they are undocumented.
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According to the accusation, before beating the university student to death with a rock, until she was disfigured and asphyxiated, the suspect tried to rape her.
The defendant was also found guilty today of being a ‘peeping tom’, for spying and invading privacy in the university dormitories on the same day of Riley’s crime.
Ibarra entered through the border with Mexico in 2022 as part of the numerous groups of migrants who arrived in the country requesting asylum and, like many of them, he was temporarily released while his process continued.
His brother, 29, was also arrested for presenting a false resident card when questioned by the Police in the midst of the investigation into Riley’s murder. Last July he pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
With information from EFE
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