Torren de Aragua, the gangster who brutally murdered Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, asked a judge for a new trial after he was sentenced last month to life in prison for a crime that shocked the nation.
Lawyers for undocumented Venezuelan immigrant Jose Ibarra filed a two-page court document Tuesday asking Judge H. Patrick Haggard to throw out the verdict and sentence handed down during his trial.
Haggard's decision was “contrary to the law” and “contrary to the evidence,” and the judge “committed other errors of law that necessitated a new trial,” the filing alleges.
Court documents do not elaborate further, but the judge asked the judge to leave the door open for the defense to “consider the facts and circumstances” at trial, as the request could be further fleshed out at a later date. I'm looking for.
A motion for a new trial is the first step the defense team must take before filing an appeal.
On November 20, Haggard found Ybarra guilty of all 10 charges, including murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to commit rape, and Peeping Tom charges.
During a four-day trial involving 29 prosecution witnesses and just three defense witnesses, prosecutors said that on February 22nd, Ybarra, 26, shot Riley, 22, while she was jogging near the University of Georgia campus. He claimed he brutally beat and choked her. In Athens.
Riley, who recently transferred from the University of Georgia to Augusta University to study nursing, allegedly fought for her life with the killer for about 18 minutes. Prosecutors argued that Riley had planned the sexual assault, but that it was because of the intense fight she endured.
Ybarra's fingerprints were found on Riley's cell phone, and evidence showed his DNA was under her fingernails, prosecutors allege.
But Ibarra's lawyers said fingerprint and DNA evidence analysis was unreliable, and that Jose's body did not match that seen in the surveillance footage, pointing the finger at Ibarra's younger brother Diego Ibarra. I tried to force myself on you.
