California bans legacy admissions in all colleges, universities
Students are seen on campus at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, April 16, 2024. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — California has become the fourth state to ban legacy admissions in the college application process, a practice that has long been criticized as favoring white or wealthy students based on their familial alumni connections.
“In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Monday statement. “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few, which is why we’re opening the door to higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly.”
The decision affects private and nonprofit universities. The University of California system eliminated legacy admission preferences in 1998, according to Newsom’s office.
Legacy admissions have come under heightened scrutiny following the Supreme Court’s decision to limit race-based affirmative action programs for colleges and universities in June 2023. California law had banned affirmative action in 1996.
“In light of this shift, proponents of AB 1780 advocated for admissions criteria that additionally ensure that factors like wealth or personal relationships do not unduly influence admissions decisions,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
The majority of Americans — 75% of those surveyed in a April 2022 Pew Research study — believe a student’s relationship to an alumni should not be a factor in admissions.
“AB 1780 aims to ensure that admissions decisions are based on merit rather than personal connections — reducing biases in the admissions process at private colleges in California,” the governor’s office said.
All private colleges and universities in California must now submit an annual report to ensure compliance.
Research has shown that legacy applicants are admitted at higher rates, but are not more qualified or academically superior applicants. They are also a less racially diverse population.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Colorado-Boulder analyzed 16 years of data from an unnamed elite university in a September 2022 study released in the journal American Sociological Review.
It found that 34.2% of legacy applicants were admitted, compared to 13.9% of non-legacy applicants — most of them white, and most of them wealthier than their counterparts. These students are from ZIP codes with higher mean incomes and are less likely to apply for financial aid with their application, the study said. They are also flagged by the school as having high donor potential.
An analysis from the Institute for Higher Education Policy in 2021 found that 53% of selective four-year colleges consider legacy status in their admissions decisions.
California joins Colorado, Maryland and Virginia in banning these practices, reinforcing bans that hundreds of colleges have already implemented.
Laken Riley in an undated photo. Image via Augusta University
(ATHENS, Ga.) — A bench trial is set to begin Friday for the suspect accused of murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus.
The suspect, Jose Ibarra, waived his right to a jury trial this week. Judge H. Patrick Haggard granted the defense’s motion for the bench trial on Tuesday, a day before jury selection had been scheduled to begin.
The case will now be presented in the Athens-Clarke County courtroom to Haggard, who will render a verdict.
Ibarra, 26, faces a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty to malice murder, felony murder and other offenses.
Police have said they believe Ibarra — a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 — did not know Riley and that this was a “crime of opportunity.”
Riley’s brutal death became a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including President-elect Donald Trump. Trump mentioned her by name as recently as Nov. 3 when he campaigned in Macon, Georgia, in a final pitch to voters in the battleground state.
Riley, a student at Augusta University, was found dead in a wooded area on the Athens campus on Feb. 22 after she didn’t return from a run. The indictment alleges Ibarra killed her by “inflicting blunt force trauma to her head and by asphyxiating her” and seriously disfigured her head by striking her “multiple times” with a rock.
Additional charges in the 10-count indictment include 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 alleged that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — a jacket and gloves — involving the offense of malice murder.
Ibarra was also charged with a peeping tom offense. The indictment alleges that on the same day as Riley’s murder, he spied through the window of a different person who lived in an apartment on campus. The judge last month denied a motion seeking to sever that charge from the case.
Haggard also denied the defense’s motion for a change of venue in the high-profile case.
Ibarra has been held without bond at the Clarke County Jail since his arrest on Feb. 23.
(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of murdering Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus was found guilty on all charges Wednesday, including malice murder and felony murder.
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.
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.”
Court is on recess until 12:30 p.m. ET, at which point Haggard said he is ready to move ahead with sentencing.
Jose Ibarra faces a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
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.
Special prosecutor Sheila 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 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.
Jose Ibarra was also seen in different clothes from the dumpster Ring footage discarding unidentifiable items in a bag that was never recovered by police hours after the killing. Ross surmised that the bag contained the clothes he was wearing earlier, 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.
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, which “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.
Diego Ibarra told officers during questioning that he was asleep at the time the killing occurred. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation 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 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 alleged that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — the jacket and gloves — involving the offense of malice murder.
Jose Ibarra was also charged with 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.
(KNOXVILLE, Tenn.) — A convicted Jan. 6 rioter has now been found guilty of plotting to murder FBI agents who were investigating the Capitol insurrection.
Edward Kelley, 35, was convicted Wednesday in the federal case against him in Knoxville, Tennessee, according to the Department of Justice.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 7, and could face a sentence of up to life in prison.
Kelley made a “kill list” of FBI agents who were investigating the Jan. 6 riot, the Department of Justice said in a press release following the conviction.
Prosecutors said he plotted to attack the Knoxville FBI office with “car bombs and incendiary devices appended to drones,” and to assassinate FBI agents “in their homes and in public places such as movie theaters.”
“The safety of our men and women in law enforcement is of paramount concern,” U.S. Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III said Wednesday. “There is simply no room in society for those who would engage in this kind of reprehensible conduct and threaten to assassinate FBI agents and others who are honorably serving to uphold the law, and this office will pursue all such threats against civil servants working for the public good.”
Earlier this month, Kelley was convicted on multiple counts, including assaulting law enforcement, at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., said Kelley was identified in photos and videos from the insurrection, and was seen in an “altercation” with a United States Capitol Police officer “where he and two other men throw the officer to the ground.”
Kelley was seen in the footage pushing against a metal barricade guarded by police to access the Capitol building. He then used a piece of wood to smash a window, then entered the building through the window, prosecutors said.
While inside the Capitol, Kelley confronted U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, and was also spotted in the Senate Gallery, according to prosecutors.
He is expected to be sentenced in Washington, D.C., federal court on April 7.
