Jose Ibarra, man convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, requests new trial

Jose Ibarra, man convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, requests new trial

Reeves Jackson

Thu, January 29, 2026 at 7:57 PM UTC

4 min read

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Jose Ibarra, the man found guilty of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley while she was out for a run on a trail along UGA's campus in February 2024, is requesting a new trial, according to court documents obtained by 11Alive on Thursday.

The 26-year-old Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison without parole in a bench trial with Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard back in November 2024.

The killing of the 22-year-old Riley added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case. But there was no mention of Ibarra's immigration status during the trial.

Ibarra was found guilty on all 10 counts which included: Malice murder, three counts of felony murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, aggravated battery, obstruction or hindering a person making emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence, and Peeping Tom.

Background on trial

The evidence shows that Ibarra killed Riley “because she would not let him rape her.”

Prosecutor Sheila Ross said Ibarra's DNA was found under Riley's fingernails and her DNA and Ibarra's were found on a jacket that police found in a trash bin in his apartment complex. A man seen in security footage throwing that jacket away was identified as Ibarra by his brother and another roommate, she said.

Riley was wearing “tight running clothes that are designed not to move,” Ross said. When her body was found, the waistband of her running tights was pulled down and her jacket, shirt and sports bra were pulled up, evidence that her clothes were displaced by an attempted sexual assault not by dragging, Ross said.

Surveillance video shows a man wearing clothes that appear to match those seen in a selfie Ibarra snapped on his phone earlier that morning, lingering outside the apartment of a female graduate student. That student told police someone tried to get in the front door while she was in the shower and peered through her window.

Ibarra was “out prowling and hunting females,” and when he couldn't get in the apartment, he turned to the running trails looking for a victim, Ross said.

Defense attorney Kaitlyn Beck told the judge that the evidence is circumstantial and does not definitively prove Ibarra's guilt.

“Because the evidence is subject to more than one interpretation, it is not beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said.

Beck tried to cast doubt on a method of DNA testing used to test some of the evidence. She noted that when a fingerprint found on Riley's phone was entered into a database, Ibarra didn't come back as a match and that a specialist visually matched the prints.

She said there was “doubt based on what was tested and on what was not tested” because investigators did not test some of the evidence they had gathered.

Throughout their questioning of witnesses and in Beck's closing, defense attorneys tried to create doubt about Jose Ibarra’s guilt by suggesting that his brother, Diego, could not be excluded as a suspect.

Ross told the judge that Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus on Feb. 22 and killed her during a struggle. Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) east of Atlanta.

Defense attorney Dustin Kirby said in his opening that Riley’s death was a tragedy and called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing. But he said there was not sufficient evidence to prove that his client killed Riley.

He said between 9:30 a.m. and 9:39 a.m., the phone continued to move closer and closer to a tower, eventually picking up data hits at 9:40 a.m.

He also noted the device could have been by a dumpster around 9:45 a.m., but he said the phone did not report a location during that time. Berni testified the next ping was when the phone returned to the residence at 9:50 a.m.

Riley’s parents, roommates and other friends and family packed the courtroom throughout the trial.

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