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[Speaker 2]
Back in February, the murder of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Hope Riley became a flashpoint in the national immigration debate because the man accused of killing her was a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022. He was an illegal immigrant, he was an illegal migrant, and he shouldn't have been in our country. Jose Ibarra is charged with 10 counts including malice, murder, felony murder, and kidnapping.
Jury selection in his trial was set to begin today, but Ibarra, in an unusual move for a murder defendant, waived his right to a jury trial, meaning his case will be heard and decided by a judge. Joining me is Lauren Johnson Norris, a criminal defense attorney in California. Lauren, this is a murder case that most people in the country know about because it became this flashpoint in the debate over immigration.
So a lot of eyes are on the trial.
[Speaker 1]
Well yeah, it occurred in a time historically in this country where folks are focused on the big influx of immigrants. Some undocumented immigrants, folks who came into the country without status. So this has become a big political point in this country, not just what we've seen from this recent election, but also in the sort of rhetoric and what's going on in Washington DC and the bills that have been created to address immigration.
So I think unfortunately for the family who seems to disfavor this type of rhetoric around the loss of their child, I don't blame them. Unfortunately it has become this contentious point for many and has received a lot of publicity.
[Speaker 2]
What are the charges against Ibarra? It seems like they're pretty broad.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and they've listed a number of charges, everything from kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated battery, aggravated assault with the intent to rape, obstructing and hindering a person making an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence. So things that have to do with interfering with 911 call to even hiding or concealing the jacket and gloves that Ibarra was wearing. So all of that they've rolled into.
Ultimately, the grand jury came back with these charges.
[Speaker 2]
Is it surprising that prosecutors didn't seek the death penalty in this high profile case?
[Speaker 1]
I guess I'm a little surprised that they didn't seek it because, you know, it's available. At the same time, it can be harder to obtain a death verdict and I suspect that they wanted to make sure that they got the verdict.
[Speaker 2]
The defense tried several things before trial. One, they tried to get the trial moved out of Athens, Georgia. I mean, would that have made a difference?
This case was nationally known.
[Speaker 1]
Right. That's a tough one because in the community itself, I'm sure there were heightened emotions and inflamed and enraged feelings around this case that happened, you know, at the university in a place where people just can really, you know, empathize and feel like it's so close to home. So I do understand why the defense thought to move the case.
But point taken, if a case is national news and folks are familiar with it, they may share those same feelings even in another county. So I'm not sure it'd make that big a difference.
[Speaker 2]
The defense tried to get some evidence suppressed, for example, cell phone evidence.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it seems like they thought to suppress evidence based on the affidavits that were submitted to the court for the search warrant. That's one way that they tried to suppress evidence. And the court ultimately said that there weren't any problems with those search warrants and kind of threw that theory out.
They also went into his apartment under what we call exigent circumstances. You know, if someone is a tremendous danger to society and could be actively hurting people right now, there's an emergency in their home. The police do have the ability to go in for those emergency type circumstances, and that is where they ultimately arrested him and I believe obtained the cell phone evidence.
So those efforts also were unsuccessful. That evidence is coming into trial.
[Speaker 2]
I'm wondering how strong the DNA evidence is because apparently it didn't exclude the defendant, but also didn't exclude another known individual associated with the case.
[Speaker 1]
Well, it's identified a potential other known individual. But at the end of the day, why was this individual Ibarra's DNA under the fingernails of the decedent? I mean, that just doesn't otherwise make sense unless there's a theory that there's some other person involved in the homicide.
And I think that is strong enough, identifying his DNA under her fingernails for the prosecution to go forward with a theory that he's the guy that did it. We don't know the details about another person's DNA, what contact she had with other people, where that DNA was located and why. But the fact that Ibarra was a stranger to her and ultimately they found all the other evidence that corroborates the charges, I think underscores how important that DNA evidence will be for the prosecutors going forward.
[Speaker 2]
What other evidence do the prosecutors have that you know of?
[Speaker 1]
I understand there is a fingerprint that was found on her cell phone, which would corroborate the charge that he interfered with her ability to call 911. They also located gloves. There's some surveillance video that identified him outside of another person's apartment where they added the peeping Tom charge that involves him.
And what they will argue is that he was in the area looking, you know, to attack someone. And all of that evidence together, I think it's extraordinarily strong case for prosecuting this homicide.
[Speaker 2]
The defense tried to separate out the peeping Tom charge. Explain how that fits in here. Sure.
[Speaker 1]
So the defense tried to separate it out because any time that there are allegations that are otherwise inflammatory, I mean, listen, nothing is more inflammatory than an attempted rape or murder. But the idea that he was lurking around the neighborhood, looking into women's windows to suggest that this was planned. He was looking for the opportunity to perpetrate on a woman and trying to keep that separate ultimately would keep that evidence from being considered in the death of Lincoln Riley.
At the same time, it tells sort of the theory of the case from the prosecution's point of view, how this crime of opportunity ultimately resulted in this tragic consequences.
[Speaker 2]
Seems to be a lot of evidence against it. Barra, do you see a defense here?
[Speaker 1]
It's a hard sell. You know, I think the defense probably recognizes that the case is inflammatory. The case is horrible.
And at the end of the day, a jury would not necessarily look at this in any sympathetic light for this defendant. That's why I think they've gone the way of a bench trial looking for, I wouldn't say technicalities, but really questions about the law and whether or not each and every element can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. They may believe a judge is in a better position to make those calls.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, there aren't many high profile murder cases where the defendant chooses a judge over a jury. Explain the different factors that go into that decision. Yeah, it's a great question.
[Speaker 1]
So we tend to think as defense lawyers that even the possibility that one juror out of the 12 may vote not guilty could potentially hang the jury, leaving the case, you know, in a status where it may get dismissed or retried, giving an opportunity to see the evidence ahead of time, try the case again. We're always hoping, you know, if there's one juror who may say not to acquit, that they may persuade other jurors. There's just a lot of hope.
The odds are better with a jury. And so traditionally, that's how defense lawyers think. We almost always exercise the right to a jury trial.
But the question becomes, in what case is, would it be potentially a better strategy to take that in front of the judge? And in my experience, that's where there are real legal questions that are harder for jurors to wrap their heads around in terms of arguments about the law, the evidence. They also ran these motions in front of this judge.
And so the judge knows that the prosecution took efforts, even if the judge denied the suppression motion, knows about the suppression motion, and they consider the lengths and efforts that the prosecution took to seek to convict here, where a jury would never know about that. And so there just may be reasons, ultimately, that the defense is strategizing the judges in a better position to hear the technical details of the case that they bring forward than a jury would, because the jury doesn't have that legal experience, presumably.
[Speaker 2]
Prosecutors don't have to put forward motive, but do you think they will put forward motive because the grand jury came back and said it was, I guess, an attempted rape?
[Speaker 1]
Well, it looks like that's the theory of the case and part of the charges here. And there's likely physical evidence that supports that. The fact that also he was looking at another woman's apartment window seems to stir in us kind of an understanding that that might be what was going on here.
They don't need to put forth a motive, but I think the average person could see why this occurred. And I think that's important as we talk about what we need to do as a community to focus on the protection of women and why these cases are important to prosecute. It's also important to get to the truth of and understand why this is happening.
I feel badly for the family that their loss of their daughter got thrown into the middle of a national immigration debate. We do know from looking at the studies that ultimately undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half of the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for things like violent crimes and a quarter of that rate for property crimes. And so the fact that this morphed into a conversation about immigration instead of a conversation about violence against women, I think is just unfortunate.
I think there are greater conversations we could have as a community and as a society about this tragic case and what women deserve. They deserve to be able to run through a park safely at their university without facing risk of harm, potential rape, and death. And I hope we can continue as a community to talk about that more.
[Speaker 2]
Thanks Lauren. That's criminal defense attorney Lauren Johnson Norris.