The trial is set to begin Friday for Jose Antonio Ibarra, the immigrant accused of killing 22-year-old college nursing student Laken Riley in one of the nation’s most high-profile criminal cases that also sparked a national immigration policy debate.

The defendant’s decision to waive his constitutional right to a jury trial this week, opting instead for a bench trial overseen by a single judge, may have been because the facts were so “horrific” that it was safer to avoid a senior juror, a potentially emotional jury. Charles Stimson, legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former homicide prosecutor, tells The New York Sun:

The defendant, Jose Antonio Ibarra, is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the United States illegally in 2022. A grand jury indicted him on ten counts, including malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, in connection with Riley’s death earlier this year. He did not admit his guilt.

Riley, who is studying nursing at Augusta University’s Athens campus. found dead He died in the woods of the nearby University of Georgia on February 22 after not returning from a run. The indictment alleges that Mr. Ibarra killed him by “blunt force trauma to his head and strangulation” and also disfigured him by “hitting his head multiple times with a rock.”

Riley’s death immediately became a flashpoint in the national response to the Biden administration’s border policies, and President Trump repeatedly mentioned Riley’s death on the campaign trail. The federal law introduced in his name, the Laken Riley Act, passed the House earlier this year, and the upcoming hearing could bring it back to the fore with the Senate now under Republican control.

Regardless of congressional action, President Trump’s picks for top immigration positions are already sending “a very clear signal that we’re going to get back to law enforcement,” Mr. Stimson says.

“It’s entirely up to Congress and the administration to decide whether it’s worth their bandwidth to do something like this,” he says. “But we don’t need another law to make illegal immigration illegal.”

As for Mr. Ibarra’s case, Judge H. Patrick Haggard of Athens-Clarke County Superior Court will oversee the trial, and the lack of a jury will likely hasten the verdict. On Tuesday, Mr. Ibarra’s defense team, in agreement with prosecutors, requested a hearing.

“There are actually two reasons why you would waive your constitutional right to a jury,” Mr. Stimson says. “The first reason is that the facts are so horrific or heartbreaking that a jury of 12 people, usually non-lawyers, can be emotionally influenced to find someone guilty even if you maintain your innocence.”

Allowing a judge to rule “solely on the facts of the law” can help take emotions “out of the equation,” he adds.

Mr. Stimson says the second reason people waive their rights to a jury is to engage in a “slow defense”; this “the facts are very strong, but the defendant wants to have his day in court” and thus convinces the defense team. The defendant proceeds with a single judge rather than a jury.

Jury trials are much faster than jury trials because no time is wasted with jury selection, objections, and jury deliberations.

“There is a hung jury. “There is no judge who has been hanged,” he says. “So it’s going to be guilty or not guilty, and so you kind of keep the emotional, horrific nature of the facts off the table.”

Although it’s impossible to know the reasons why a defense team might recommend a bench or jury trial in a particular case, he says his guess is that “the facts are so outrageous that they don’t want the jury to rush to a verdict, and they would acquit if there was an impartial judge to decide on the facts.” “I think you can.”

However, sometimes there may be reasons why defendants prefer a jury. In another high-profile criminal case – the OJ Simpson murder trial in the mid-1990s – Mr Stimson says the verdict would have been “guilty” if the verdict had been given in front of a judge rather than a jury.

“But the jury was swayed by Johnnie Cochran and his defense team,” he says. “So you have reason to choose a jury trial when you think you can dazzle the jury or get them to hang someone, because all you have to do is hang them.”

He says the absence of a jury will change the presentation of the trial because both sides will likely give shorter opening statements because they are not trying to influence the jury. The defense will also likely spend its time trying to prove that the government failed to comply with those demands.
Mr. Stimson adds: “The burden of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The Sun has reached out to the prosecutor and Mr. Ibarra’s defense attorney for comment.