A Georgia judge denied Jose Ibarra’s motion for a new trial following his conviction in the killing of nursing student Laken Riley.
Lawyers for Ibarra argued his constitutional rights were violated when the judge declined two defense motions before trial. One was a request to delay the trial to give an expert witness time to review and analyze DNA data. The other would have excluded some cellphone evidence.
“As the only evidence admitted at trial derived exclusively from the cellphone was the Rubin location data, and that data is cumulative of the timing advance records provided directly from the service provider, any error in failing to suppress the cellphone is harmless,” Superior Court Judge Patrick Haggard wrote, rejecting the request and leaving in place Ibarra’s sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. “Even excluding the cellphone location data, the Court finds the remaining evidence, including the DNA, fingerprint, trace, and video evidence, overwhelming and sufficient to support Defendant’s conviction. Hence, any error arising from the admission of the cellphone evidence is harmless.”
Ibarra, a Venezuelan migrant, was found guilty of malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, hindering a 911 call, tampering with evidence and peeping tom in connection with Riley’s death.
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A spokesperson for Ibarra’s attorneys said they plan to file an appeal.
Ibarra, 28, had entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was allowed to stay while he pursued his immigration case under former President Joe Biden‘s open border.
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Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus in Athens on Feb. 22, 2024, and killed her during a struggle. Riley was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) east of Atlanta.
Ibarra’s trial attorneys had asked the judge to delay the trial after a DNA expert said she would need six weeks to review evidence analyzed using TrueAllele Casework, software used to interpret DNA and assist the defense. The judge wrote in his order Monday that Ibarra’s lawyers “effectively challenged the TrueAllele DNA evidence at trial” and concluded that Ibarra was not harmed by the denial of a delay.
The DNA expert testified during a January hearing on the motion for a new trial, and the judge wrote that he did not find her opinion to be persuasive or credible and that it would not have changed the trial outcome.
Ibarra’s attorneys also had challenged the seizure of two cellphones from his apartment, saying they were not listed on the search warrant, and sought to exclude evidence pulled from them. Haggard wrote that there were “exigent circumstances authorizing the seizure of the cellphones” and that the phones were not searched until after warrants were issued authorizing the search of the contents of the phones.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
