A murder trial began on Friday morning for the man charged with killing Laken Riley, a nursing student. Her death in Georgia in February became a flashpoint in the debate over immigration after investigators said the perpetrator was an undocumented immigrant.
The killing of Ms. Riley was invoked by Donald J. Trump, then a presidential candidate, as he called for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and by President Biden in his State of the Union address.
In a courtroom in Athens, Ga., on Friday, prosecutors started by laying out the harrowing details of a violent encounter that deeply unsettled the city, which is home to the University of Georgia. Ms. Riley’s body was found along a wooded trail on the university campus.
Prosecutors said that Ms. Riley, who was 22, was confronted on the trail by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela. He is accused of blocking her as she tried to call 911for help and of pulling up her clothes with the intention to rape her, according to an indictment. Investigators said that Mr. Ibarra strangled Ms. Riley and hit her over the head repeatedly with a rock.
Mr. Ibarra was arrested on Feb. 22, the day after the attack, and has remained in custody without bail. He has pleaded not guilty to the array of charges he faces, including malice murder and aggravated assault. The charges also include a single “peeping Tom” count; prosecutors said he peered into the windows of someone else’s campus apartment on the day Ms. Riley was killed.
On Tuesday, the day before jury selection was scheduled to start, Judge H. Patrick Haggard of State Superior Court agreed to a request by Mr. Ibarra’s lawyers to hold a bench trial, meaning the judge — rather than a jury — will weigh the evidence and determine whether Mr. Ibarra is guilty.
In a brief hearing, Mr. Ibarra, with the aid of a Spanish language interpreter, acknowledged that he understood what the request entailed and accepted it.
The request came after his lawyers tried unsuccessfully to move the trial out of Athens and to keep certain evidence from being presented to jurors.
Mr. Ibarra was arrested by the Border Patrol when he entered the country illegally in 2022, near El Paso, Texas. He was released with temporary permission to stay in the country. He was later arrested again, this time in New York, for driving a scooter without a license and with a child who was not wearing a helmet, officials said.
Last year, he was arrested in Georgia in connection with a shoplifting case and was released.
Ms. Riley was a student in the nursing program at Augusta University, which has a campus in Athens; she had previously attended the University of Georgia.
Republican lawmakers cited her case as they pursued legislation aimed at tightening Georgia’s already strict immigration laws. In May, Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed a law requiring local law enforcement agencies to scrutinize the immigration status of people in their custody and to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Federal lawmakers also pushed for legislation related to the killing. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill named for Ms. Riley that would require that migrants who enter the country without authorization, and who are accused of theft, be taken into federal custody. The legislation stalled in the Senate and was criticized as a crass attempt to exploit a tragedy.
Last week, voters in Athens and the surrounding region denied re-election to Deborah Gonzalez, the district attorney whose office is handling the prosecution. She was elected in 2020 as a progressive prosecutor who had ambitions of overhauling the office, but she quickly became a polarizing figure. Her term ends in December.
Mr. Trump repeatedly drew attention to the case, condemning Mr. Ibarra as a “monster.” He met with Ms. Riley’s family and some of her friends in March and remarked during a rally that they had described her as “the brightest light in every room.”
During the State of the Union, Mr. Biden mentioned Ms. Riley in response to heckling from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican. “An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” Mr. Biden said.
The president drew backlash for referring to Mr. Ibarra as “an illegal” — a term viewed by critics as a dehumanizing pejorative.
Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump continued to call attention to the case and those of other Americans who he said had been victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. At a rally just before Election Day in Macon, he raised the issue again as he made his final pitch to Georgia voters.
Any undocumented immigrant convicted of killing an American citizen should be sentenced to death, he said, adding, “I will not let them spill one more drop of precious American blood.”
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