Venezuelan Migrant Found Guilty of Killing Laken Riley in Georgia
The New York Times
The verdict followed a four-day bench trial in which prosecutors detailed a violent attack that became a flashpoint in the bitter national debate over immigration policy.
A 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela was convicted on Wednesday of murdering Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student whose killing has been repeatedly cited by President-elect Donald J. Trump in his push for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented people.
Ms. Riley, 22, was attacked in February while running on a trail on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. A day later, the authorities charged Jose Antonio Ibarra, a migrant who had entered the country illegally, in connection with the killing.
Judge H. Patrick Haggard of State Superior Court in Athens-Clarke County found Mr. Ibarra guilty after a bench trial that included four days of arguments and testimony. The judge, rather than a jury, decided the case at the request of Mr. Ibarra’s lawyers after they tried unsuccessfully to move the case out of Athens and to keep certain evidence from being presented to jurors.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Ibarra said that their decision was based on concerns that a jury in Athens could not review the evidence dispassionately.
Judge Haggard announced his verdict minutes after lawyers concluded their arguments on Wednesday morning and planned to sentence Mr. Ibarra in the early afternoon. Prosecutors are seeking a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
For months, Ms. Riley’s name had been invoked by conservatives, who argued that her death had been the result of a failure by the Biden administration to secure the nation’s borders. On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump called Mr. Ibarra a “monster.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, heckled President Biden about the case during his State of the Union address, goading him into addressing it.
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