Laken Riley case: Suspect found guilty by judge in campus killing, sentenced to life

(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of murdering Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus was found guilty by a judge on all charges Wednesday, including malice murder and felony murder.

He was sentenced by the judge to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the maximum possible.

Prosecutors called the evidence against the suspect “overwhelming,” while the defense raised the theory that the defendant could be an accomplice but not the killer during closing arguments in his trial.

Jose Ibarra, 26, was accused of killing the 22-year-old nursing student while she was out for a run after prosecutors said she “refused to be his rape victim.” Jose Ibarra, an undocumented migrant, was charged with malice murder and felony murder in connection with her death, which became a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including President-elect Donald Trump.

Jose Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial and the case was presented over four days in the Athens-Clarke County courtroom to Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who rendered the verdict on Wednesday shortly after closing arguments in the trial.

Sobbing could be heard in the courtroom as he read the guilty verdicts on each charge.

Before announcing his verdict, Haggard told the courtroom that he wrote down two statements from the attorneys during closing arguments.

One was a statement by the prosecutor, who said the “evidence was overwhelming and powerful.”

The other was one by the defense attorney, who said that the judge is “required to set aside my emotions.”

“That’s the same thing we tell jurors,” he said. “That’s the way I have to approach this, and I did. Both of those statements are correct.”

In subsequently issuing his sentence on Wednesday, Haggard acknowledged there can be “no such thing as closure” in an event like this.

“As many times as you reflect on the loss, at some point you start smiling about the memories, and I’m hopeful that at some point that takes over to a certain extent, but there’s very little, including the sentence of Mr. Ibarra, that’s going to help much, and I acknowledge that,” he said.

Riley’s family addresses court: ‘There is no end to the pain’

Riley’s family addressed the court ahead of sentencing with often tearful victim impact statements while calling for a life sentence without parole.

“There is no end to the pain, suffering and loss that we have experienced or will continue to endure,” her mother, Allyson Phillips, said.

She remembered Riley as “smart, hard-working, kind, thoughtful, and most importantly she was a child of God.”

She called Jose Ibarra a “monster” who “took my best friend.”

“This horrific individual robbed us all of our hopes and dreams for Laken,” she said.

Lauren Phillips, Riley’s sister, said her big sister was her “biggest role model.”

“I looked up to her in every way,” she said. “She brought the joy that I needed into my life and never failed to make me laugh.”

She said seeing her parents’ heartbreak is “excruciating” and she will never get closure over her sister’s murder.

“We’re a broken family of three struggling to find out how to live this life through the silence and emptiness that her absence has left behind,” she said.

Riley’s father, Jason Riley, said he is “haunted by the fear” his daughter must have felt in her final moments.

“I have to live with the fact that I could not protect her when she needed me the most,” he said.

Riley’s stepfather, John Phillips, said she was the “best daughter, sister, granddaughter, friend and overall person that you could ever hope to meet.”

“I plead with this court to protect the world from this truly evil person by sentencing him to prison for life without the possibility of parole for any reason, so that he could never have the opportunity to do this to anyone else ever again,” he said.

Several of Riley’s good friends also addressed the court, including Riley’s three roommates, who had testified during the trial about trying to find and get in touch with her the day of her murder.

Connolly Huth said she used to run with Riley, but has since “lost the joy of what running was before Laken was taken from us.”

“I live with excruciating guilt every day that I was not accompanying Laken on this run and that it was her and not me,” she said, crying. “I hope and pray that it will never happen again to anyone.”

Lilly Steiner said life has been “dull” without Riley.

“Laken left a colossal legacy to everyone she touched and I have zero doubt that she is still not finished building it,” she said. “And that is something Jose Ibarra will never be able to take away.”

Sofia Magana called Riley her “chosen family” and “fearless other half,” and said her heart is “full of grief, sadness and an overwhelming sense of lost.”

“The loss of my best friend has shattered my world in ways I never thought possible,” she said through tears.

State shows moment parents learned Riley was dead

As part of the victim impact statements ahead of sentencing, the state showed body worn camera of officers breaking the news to Laken’s family that she was dead.

Her mother could be seen collapsing on the ground, weeping.

“That’s what they endured,” special prosecutor Sheila Ross told the judge. “That’s how it was on that day when they came here to look for their daughter.”

Ross also showed the court videos of Riley, including ones of her running in a race.

“These are just little snippets that we saw in the investigation that we thought would be important to share with the court that shows not only the type of person that she was — that you just heard from her friends and family — but the true impact that her murder had on her parents,” Ross said.

Jose Ibarra faced a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole and maximum of life without the possibility of parole for the top charge of malice murder.

Ross urged the judge to offer a sentence that “brings comfort to this community” and one that “appropriately reflects the harm that was done in this case” while asking for the maximum sentence.

The defense asked the judge to impose life with the possibility of parole.

“Getting a life sentence is automatic,” defense attorney John Donnelly said. “There’s certainly no guarantee of parole.”

He added that given the defendant’s immigration status, if he were to be released in the future, “it would only to be deported.”

State says evidence ‘loud and clear’

Prosecutors called 28 witnesses while laying out what they said was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Jose Ibarra killed Riley, who died by blunt force head trauma and asphyxia.

Ross told the court Jose Ibarra encountered Riley while she was on her morning jog on Feb. 22 while he was out “hunting” for women on the Athens campus.

Ross said Riley “fought for her life” in a struggle that caused Jose Ibarra to leave forensic evidence behind. Digital and video evidence also pointed to him as the only killer, she said.

“The evidence in this case has been overwhelming, and the evidence in this case has spoken loud and clear — that he is Laken Riley’s killer, and that he killed her because she would not let him rape her,” Ross said during her closing argument on Wednesday.

A forensics expert testified that Jose Ibarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s right fingernails, and that his two brothers, who lived with him in an apartment near the campus, were excluded as matches.

When Jose Ibarra was questioned by police a day after the murder, he had visible scratches on his arms, officers said. He also had scratches on his neck and back, which Ross said could have only been left by Riley.

“In order to not find him guilty, you would have to disbelieve your own eyes,” Ross said.

“She marked him. She marked him for everyone to see. She marked him for you to see,” Ross told the judge.

Prosecutors argued Jose Ibarra hindered Riley from making a 911 call, and said his thumbprint was left on her phone. Data from his Samsung phone and the Garmin watch Riley was wearing on her run showed the devices overlapped and were in close proximity in the forest where she was found dead, an FBI analyst testified.

Jose Ibarra was captured on Ring footage discarding a bloody jacket and three disposable gloves near his apartment about 15 minutes after Riley died, prosecutors said. The individual’s face can’t be seen in the video, but Jose Ibarra’s roommate testified that it was him. The defendant’s brother, Diego Ibarra, also identified him as the person in the video while being questioned by police a day after the murder.

Riley’s DNA was found on the jacket and gloves, the forensics expert said. Jose Ibarra’s DNA was also found on the jacket, while his two brothers were excluded as matches, the expert said.

“That is what we call consciousness of guilt in our business — he threw away those items because he knew he had killed her, and he threw them away because he didn’t want anyone to find him,” Ross said.

Her DNA was also found on an Adidas cap he was seen wearing in the video, the expert said. That cap was not discarded, Ross surmised, because Jose Ibarra could not see that there was actually blood on it.

Hours after the killing, Jose Ibarra was also captured wearing different clothes from the dumpster Ring footage while discarding unidentifiable items in a bag in another dumpster at his apartment complex, Ross said. That bag was never recovered by police, she said. Ross surmised that the bag contained the clothes he was wearing earlier that day, which were also similar to ones he was wearing in a selfie posted on Snapchat earlier that morning.

“His digital evidence of posting selfies of himself wearing what is basically his rapist gear an hour before he leaves his house — that condemns him, he has condemned himself,” Ross said.

Defense presents alternative theory

The defense called three witnesses, including a neighbor who said Diego Ibarra had threatened her the night of Riley’s murder.

The defense said they had planned to call two additional witnesses — including Diego Ibarra, who is in federal custody awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to possessing a fraudulent green card, however, his attorney did not wish for him to testify.

“While the evidence in this case is voluminous, it is circumstantial,” defense attorney Kaitlyn Beck told the judge.

Beck told the judge they advised Jose Ibarra to have a bench trial “trusting that your honor could and believing that your honor would set aside the emotions in this case and simply consider the evidence.”

She argued there is doubt about what was tested and said the judge should be “skeptical” of the DNA evidence.

She presented an “alternative theory” that Diego Ibarra was actually Riley’s murderer, and that Jose Ibarra was an accomplice in covering up the evidence.

“Maybe it was him throwing away the jacket, as Diego said, maybe he was covering up for his brother,” Beck said.

“Under that theory, of course, Jose would be guilty of tampering, but that theory does not prove that he was present or involved in the murder of Laken Riley,” she said.

She said since three gloves were discarded, it “suggests that there are multiple pairs of hands wearing those gloves.”

On rebuttal, Ross called the defense’s theory “desperate” and a “mischaracterization of the evidence.”

“There is no reasonable explanation for all of this evidence other than he is guilty of every single count in this indictment,” Ross said of Jose Ibarra.

Diego Ibarra told officers during questioning that he was asleep at the time the killing occurred. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent who was on the case testified earlier Wednesday that there was no evidence to contradict that statement.

Jose Ibarra, a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022, waived his right to testify during the trial. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges, including malice murder and three counts of felony murder.

Additional charges in the 10-count indictment included aggravated battery, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, obstructing or hindering a person making an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence. The latter charge was that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — the jacket and gloves — in the murder.

Jose Ibarra was also convicted of a peeping tom offense. Prosecutors said that in the hours before Riley’s murder, he spied through the window of a UGA graduate student, and said the incident “shows his state of mind” that day.

The student testified that she called police after hearing someone trying to open her door.

Ross said the person at the student’s apartment was wearing clothes similar to the ones Jose Ibarra had on in the Snapchat selfie posted earlier that morning, including the Adidas cap.

Trump released a statement following the verdict in the high-profile trial, saying that “our hearts will always be with” Riley. He also said it’s “time to secure our border, and remove these criminals and thugs from our Country, so nothing like this can happen again!”

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