ATLANTA, Ga. — A judge has rejected a request for a new trial for a Venezuelan man convicted of killing Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley.
Lawyers for Jose Ibarra argued his constitutional rights were violated when the judge declined two defense motions before trial. One was a request to delay the trial to give an expert witness time to review and analyze DNA data. The other would have excluded some cellphone evidence.
Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who presided over the trial, wrote in an order Monday that the evidence of Ibarra’s guilt presented by the state was “overwhelming and powerful.”…