Suspect accused of killing Laken Riley waives jury in murder trial
Courtesy of Augusta University
(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus has waived his right to a jury trial.
The judge granted the defense’s motion for a bench trial for the suspect, Jose Ibarra, during a hearing in Athens-Clarke County on Tuesday.
The bench trial is scheduled to begin on Friday before Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who will render a verdict in the case.
Jury selection had been scheduled to start in the case on Wednesday.
When asked by Haggard if he understood the waiver of jury trial, and if it was “freely, knowingly and intelligently signed and considered,” Ibarra said yes.
The defense also said they agree with their client’s decision to waive a jury trial, and confirmed that the form had been translated appropriately into Spanish by a court interpreter for Ibarra.
Last month, Haggard denied the defense’s motion for a change of venue in the high-profile case.
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.
He 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 also denied a motion seeking to sever that charge from the case.
Ibarra was denied bond following his arrest on Feb. 23 and is being held at the Clarke County Jail.
Police have said they do not believe Ibarra — a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 — knew Riley and that this was a “crime of opportunity.” Her death has become a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including now President-elect Donald Trump.
A cluster of broken pieces of wood from destroyed houses rest along a damaged bridge in Lake Lure, North Carolina, Oct. 2, 2024, after the passage of Hurricane Helene. (Allison Joyce/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — At least 1,000 National Guard troops are heading into the most hard-hit areas in western North Carolina on Thursday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene as the death toll from the storm approaches 200 with hundreds of people still unaccounted for.
“The nation has your back. We’re not leaving ‘til you’re back on your feet completely,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday after surveying the mass destruction from the storm in North and South Carolina.
Helene is now the deadliest mainland hurricane to strike the United States since Katrina in 2005 which claimed the lives of nearly 1,400 people.
More than a million people still don’t have power and a nearly completely dark strip marks the path of Helene through the Southeast as the crisis over getting access to drinkable water is growing.
Vice President Kamala Harris met with local authorities and grieving families in Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday.
“It is particularly devastating in terms of the loss of life that this community has experienced, the loss of normalcy,” Harris said.
Elsewhere, new video captured the moment a landslide hit a house in Newland, North Carolina, as Helene trampled the Southeast.
In Fairview, Connecticut, Philip Morgan showed ABC News the system of ropes he has had to create to rappel the terrain since the bridge to his neighborhood was wiped out.
Morgan’s brother is on a ventilator and in dire need of supplies as Philip Morgan says it is only a matter of time before his brother will need to be moved.
“[My biggest fear is] something happening to him and not being able to get out of here fast enough,” Morgan told ABC News.
Meanwhile, nearby at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, 400 nurses arrived in buses from across the country — even as far as Alaska — all to lend a helping hand in the aftermath of the sheer destruction of the storm.
“They showed up with a smile on their face. Eager to help, eager just to give us a little bit of reprieve,” said Matt Alligood, a resident nurse at Mission Hospital. “So, it’s … it’s been amazing.”
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Special counsel Jack Smith is urging the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference case to reject an effort by Trump’s attorneys to throw out obstruction-related charges brought against him following a Supreme Court ruling this summer that narrowed the statute’s use against Jan. 6 rioters.
Trump’s attorneys have argued that the obstruction of an official proceeding statute should no longer apply to Trump’s alleged conduct in the indictment against him, arguing that Trump was never directly involved in obstructing the Jan. 6 vote-certification proceedings.
But Smith, in his new filing, said his recent superseding indictment clearly alleges Trump and his co-conspirators’ involvement in attempting to send fraudulent certificates to Congress that day, for then-Vice President Mike Pence to use as he presided over the certification.
“As set forth in the superseding indictment, the defendant and others began in early December 2020 to cause individuals to serve as the defendant’s purported electors in several targeted states with the intent that those individuals ‘make and send to the Vice President and Congress false certifications that they were legitimate electors,'” Smith wrote.
“Ultimately, the defendant sought” to “certify illegal votes” through “fraudulent elector certificates” that were “mailed to the President of the Senate, the Archivist of the United States, and others in connection with the January 6 proceeding to certify the 2020 presidential election results,” wrote Smith.
Trump last year pleaded not guilty to federal charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to remain in power. In July, the Supreme Court ruled in a blockbuster decision that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.
Smith subsequently charged Trump in a superseding indictment that was adjusted to respect the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In his new filing, Smith also disputed arguments put forward by Trump’s attorneys that the former president “bears no factual or legal responsibility” for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
The superseding indictment “plainly alleges that the defendant willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C., and then directing them to march to the Capitol to pressure the Vice President and legislators to reject the legitimate certificates and instead rely on the fraudulent electoral certificates,” Smith wrote.
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — The federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged in connection with the January 2023 beating death of Tyre Nichols continued Monday, with the cross-examination of a Memphis Police Department (MPD) lieutenant who trained the defendants.
Kevin Whitmore, who is representing ex-officer Tadarrius Bean, cross-examined Second Lt. Larnce Wright on training methods at the police academy, noting that Wright did not train Bean in several courses, so he could not speak to what Bean was taught, according to WATN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Memphis covering the case in the courtroom.
Wright did not teach the officers how to write reports, provide medical classes for them or teach them about the duty of an officer to intervene if another officer engages in misconduct, according to WATN.
Last Thursday, Wright testified that the scenario of the initial traffic stop involving Nichols should have been low-risk, according to WATN. Wright said during the initial stop, Nichols voicing that he was trying to do what was asked should have led officers to deescalate the situation. Wright claimed officers were not following training for several reasons and described Nichols’ behavior as human nature, according to WATN.
The former officers — Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith — were charged on Sept. 12, 2023, with violating Nichols’ civil rights through excessive use of force, unlawful assault, failing to intervene in the assault and failing to render medical aid — charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The officers have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
On Monday, Whitmore showed Wright several presentation slides he uses in training, which the attorney said denoted that there is no such thing as a routine traffic stop, which “could turn violent in an instant,” according to WATN.
The defense argued that training is only as good as the trainer.
Wright claimed that if a violent felony was not committed, pursuit is not allowed, according to WATN. Body-camera footage shows Nichols fled after police initially pulled him over for allegedly driving recklessly, then shocked him with a Taser and pepper-sprayed him. Officers allegedly then beat Nichols minutes later. Nichols, 29, died on Jan. 10, 2023 — three days later. Footage shows the officers walking around, talking to each other as Nichols was injured and sitting on the ground. The beating triggered protests and calls for police reform.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said she has been unable to substantiate Nichols was driving recklessly.
Whitmore asked Wright if an officer could have tunnel vision during an arrest, alluding to the possibility that Bean was focused on handcuffing Nichols and didn’t see what was happening to the suspect, according to WATN.
Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, the two additional officers who were also charged in this case, have pleaded guilty to some of the federal charges.
Martin pleaded guilty to excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as conspiracy to witness tamper, according to court records. The other two charges will be dropped at sentencing, which has been scheduled for Dec. 5, according to the court records. Mills pleaded guilty to two of the four counts in the indictment — excessive force and failing to intervene, as well as conspiring to cover up his use of unlawful force, according to the DOJ. The government said it will recommend a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, based on the terms of Mills’ plea agreement.
The prosecution told ABC News in a statement Thursday that they will not have any statements until after the trial. The defense attorneys did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
After the police encounter, Nichols was transferred to the hospital in critical condition where he later died. The medical examiner’s official autopsy report for Nichols showed he “died of brain injuries from blunt force trauma,” the district attorney’s office told Nichols’ family in May 2023.
Michael Stengel, Haley’s attorney, officially asked for a mistrial on Friday due to the forms — known as response to resistance — that were submitted as evidence for the trial, according to WATN. The ex-officers were required to fill out these forms to explain their use of force against Nichols. Stengel argued the documents were protected by Garrity. Garrity rights protect public employees from being compelled to self-incrimination during investigative interviews conducted by their employers, according to a Tennessee attorney general legal document. Stengel argued that the response to resistance forms the ex-officers filled out could not be used as evidence to protect the ex-officers’ Garrity rights.
Judge Mark Norris decided the documentation forms do not violate the ex-officers’ Garrity rights and ruled in favor of keeping them as evidence, according to WATN. Norris said on Monday that there are 37 witness testimonies left in the trial, and that a juror has potentially been lost due to illness, according to WATN.
Martin, one of two ex-officers who plead guilty to charges connected to the death of Tyre Nichols, was called to the stand after Wright was finished with questioning. Martin began his testimony Monday, towards the end of day.
The five former officers charged in this case were all members of the Memphis Police Department SCORPION unit — a crime suppression unit that has since been disbanded after Nichols’ death. All the officers were fired for violating MPD policies.
