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

The defendant’s decision this week to waive his constitutional right to a jury trial rather than opt for a bench trial overseen by a single judge may be because the facts are so “horrific” that it is more sure to avoid a potentially emotional jury, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and former homicide prosecutor Charles Stimson, says The New York Sun.

The defendant, Jose Antonio Ibarra, is a Venezuelan national who entered America illegally in 2022. A grand jury indicted him on 10 counts in connection with Riley’s death earlier this year, including malicious murder, felony murder and serious assault, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Riley, who had studied nursing at Augusta University’s Athens campus, was found dead in a wooded area of ​​the nearby University of Georgia on Feb. 22 after he failed to return from a run. The indictment alleges that Mr. Ibarra killed her by causing her “blunt force trauma to the head and asphyxiating her,” as well as disfiguring her by “striking her in the head several times with a rock.”

Riley’s death immediately became a flashpoint in the national pushback against the Biden administration’s border policies, and President Trump referred to Riley’s death repeatedly during the campaign. Federal legislation introduced in her name, the Laken Riley Act, passed the House earlier this year, and the upcoming trial could put that legislation back in the spotlight now that the Senate is under Republican control.

Regardless of what Congress does, President Trump’s picks for top immigration positions already send a “very clear signal that we’re going to get back into law enforcement, especially on immigration,” Mr. Stimson says.

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

When it comes to Mr. Ibarra’s case, Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard will oversee the trial — and the lack of a jury will likely speed up the verdict. On Tuesday, Mr. Ibarra’s defense team, with prosecutors in agreement, had requested a bench trial.

“There are really two reasons why you waive your constitutional right to a jury,” says Mr. Stimson. “The first reason is that the facts are so gruesome or tug at the heartstrings that a jury—which is 12 human beings who are not usually lawyers—could be emotionally swayed to find someone guilty even if you maintain your innocence.”

Allowing a judge to decide “only on the facts of the law” can help take emotion “out of the equation,” he adds.

The second reason people waive their right to a jury, Mr. Stimson says, is to make a “slow plea,” that is, when “the facts are so strong, but the defendant wants his day in court,” so the defense team convince. the defendant to proceed with a single judge rather than a jury.

Bench trials are much faster than jury trials because time is not wasted on jury selection, objections, and jury deliberations.

“There is a hung jury. There is no such thing as a suspended judge,” he says. “So he’s going to be guilty or not guilty, so you take the emotional and horrific nature of the facts off the table.”

He says that while it’s impossible to know why a defense team recommends a bench trial or a jury in a particular case, his guess is that “the facts are so outrageous that they don’t want the jury to rush to a trial and they think it can be acquitted if they have a dispassionate judge giving a verdict on the facts.”

However, there are sometimes reasons for defendants to opt for a jury. In another high-profile criminal case – OJ Simpson’s murder trial in the mid-1990s – the verdict would have been “guilty, period”, says Mr Stimson, if it had gone before a judge rather than a jury .

“But that jury was swayed by Johnnie Cochran and the defense team,” he says. “So there are reasons to go for a jury trial when you think you can pull the wool over the jury’s eyes or get someone to shut them down, because all it takes is to shut them down.”

Not having a jury will change the presentation of the trial, he says, because both sides will likely give shorter opening statements because they’re not trying to sway a jury. The defense will likely spend its time trying to prove that the government did not meet
“his burden to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt,” adds Mr. Stimson.

The Sun has contacted Mr Ibarra’s prosecutor and defense lawyer for comment.