Laken Riley case: Judge H. Patrick Haggard to try Jose Antonio Ibarra, Venezuelan immigrant accused of killing nursing student

The judge who will decide the fate of the illegal immigrant accused of smuggling Killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley is a no-nonsense, silvery-white-haired lawyer whose father was killed in an armed robbery.

Starting Friday, state Supreme Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard will preside over the trial of Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who authorities say crossed the border illegally before Riley’s killing in the college town of Athens sent him into a rage. National debate on immigration

Haggard, appointed to the Supreme Court bench by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal in 2011, is no stranger to high-profile cases. A year after his appointment to the judicial branch that covers Athens, Haggard was assigned to the death penalty case of admitted cop killer Jamie Hood, who represented him.

During the pretrial hearing, Hood asked Haggard, who is white, whether the man who fatally shot the judge’s father in 1992 was Black, the Athens Banner-Herald reported. When Haggard said it was, the Black defendant suggested the fatal shooting might affect his handling of the case.

“I killed a white man,” Hood said, according to the Banner-Herald. “Professional people say it has nothing to do with what’s going on, but in this forest area it does.”

Newell Hamilton Jr., who was on Hood’s defense team at trial, recalled that day in 2012.

“Dude, you should have seen Judge Haggard’s face. Damn, he’d be red,” Hamilton told CNN this week. “You should have seen how angry he was. You know, you talk about the red face. … He got angry.”

Still, Hamilton said Haggard is careful about how he responds, avoiding the appearance of bias.

“‘Judge, I have a question,'” Hamilton recalled the defendant saying. “He says, ‘I want you to tell me, man to man… that a black man killed your father, and you’re not going to use that against me.’ “The judge turned red and said, ‘Let me tell you this, as a judge, I have no bias.'”

The Banner-Herald quoted Haggard as replying: “Mr. Hood, I came here to do my job.”

That’s how Haggard is expected to handle a closely watched murder case that has become a flashpoint in the bitter debate over the border crisis, according to both Hamilton and the man who prosecuted the police shooter a dozen years ago.

“I don’t remember a time when he lost his cool during the trial,” former prosecutor Kenneth Mauldin, who now teaches at the University of Georgia School of Law, told CNN. “Judge Haggard maintained his composure and judicial demeanor, as you should, and maintained that temperament throughout the process. … He was extremely fair.”

CNN requested comment from Haggard.

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Riley, 22, who was studying at the Augusta University School of Nursing campus in Athens, was killed while she was jogging on the University of Georgia’s Athens campus on February 22.

On Tuesday, Ibarra waived his right to a trial by jury and agreed to a bench trial to decide Haggard’s guilt or innocence. The prosecution agreed and Haggard approved the waiver. Ibarra told the court through his translator that he realized he could not reverse his decision the day before jury selection began.

At the court hearing, evidence and witness or expert testimony will be presented to the judge instead of the jury. Defense attorneys requested the hearing after the judge denied a request to suppress some evidence in the case before trial, according to court records.

In a sequential hearing, the judge alone decides on the merits of the case and the application of the law. According to CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson, defendants prefer bench trials in some cases because of the perception that judges may ignore negative publicity and press coverage and address the facts of violent crimes with less emotion than juries.

CNN has requested comment from Ibarra’s attorneys as well as the office of Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez. At Tuesday’s hearing, Haggard prohibited attorneys and the defendant from speaking to the media.

Ibarra was indicted in May on 10 charges, including charges related to Riley’s death and another incident in which Ibarra allegedly went to a University of Georgia apartment building the same day as the murder, looked through the window and spied on a student. .

Gonzalez said prosecutors plan to seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if Ibarra is convicted of the most serious charges, according to court records.

Hamilton said of the decision to hold a hearing in Ibarra’s case: “Would I put something like that in the hands of a judge? The answer is: ‘I’m not built like that.'” “I will always trust a jury over a judge. … But I will say this: I don’t remember Judge Haggard acting unfairly.”

Mauldin said Ibarra’s attorneys would not seek a bench warrant if they thought Haggard could not be fair to their client.

Haggard is currently serving his third term on the Supreme Court. He was the chief judge from 2017 to 2020. He was previously a municipal court judge for the city of Winterville from 1992 to 2011, according to his judicial web page. He practiced both criminal and civil law in the Athens area and was a certified mediator.

Haggard founded the Western Circuit Veterans Treatment Court in 2013, which provides therapy, substance abuse treatment and other services to veterans with criminal cases, according to the page. Judge is a member of the First United Methodist Church of Athens.

“Judge Haggard will deal fairly with this man,” Hamilton said, referring to Ibarra. “I think he’s going to judge him fairly. It’s going to be tough. I think he’s not going to get any peace of mind. … That’s my experience with Judge Haggard. He was always a gentleman, but he didn’t do that.” Give us some peace.”

Firestorm on crime and illegal immigration

Ibarra’s case has reignited the fierce national debate over immigration.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump claimed that the Biden administration’s immigration policies contributed to Riley’s death. Before his election, Trump promised large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants. Riley’s parents attended a Trump rally in March and met with Trump backstage, according to co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita.

Democrats also used Riley’s name. Former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned for presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October, supported President Joe Biden’s initiative to secure the border and criticized Trump for killing a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year.

Harris promised during her presidential campaign to revive the bill and sign it if elected. Clinton said the bill would lead to “a full review before people come in” at the U.S.-Mexico border. “Now Trump has canceled the bill,” Clinton said before addressing Riley’s death.

Ibarra was arrested in September 2022 on suspicion of illegally entering the United States and “was released on parole and released pending further processing,” according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He was arrested by police in New York City in September 2023 and charged with “acting in a manner that injures a child under 17 and violating a motor vehicle registration,” ICE said in a news release. But police released Ibarra “before he could be taken into custody,” according to ICE. In response to a question about Ibarra’s arrest and release in New York City, the NYPD’s public information office told CNN via email: “Based on the information you provided in your investigation, there are no arrests on file.”

As of February 2024, Ibarra was living in Athens, where the University of Georgia was located where Riley was killed.

On Feb. 22, he went for a morning run on the UGA campus, where he will study until May 2023 before transferring to Augusta University. UGA Police Chief Jeff Clark said the search for Riley began around noon when he received a call from a friend saying he had not returned from a run. His body was later found near a lake.

Clark said Ibarra was linked to Riley’s killing based on campus security camera footage, physical evidence and information from the community.

With the case fueling a political storm over crime and illegal immigration, Haggard will be under close scrutiny as he tackles one of the most politically and racially charged cases since he presided over Hood’s murder case nearly a decade ago.

According to the indictment, Ibarra repeatedly hit Riley in the head with a rock and strangled him. He was arrested the day after Riley’s death. Authorities said there was no evidence that Ibarra and Riley knew each other and called the murder a “crime of opportunity.”

Hood was convicted of 36 crimes, including murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping and carjacking, according to his appeal, which was rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2021. The charges against Hood stemmed from the 2010 shooting death of a man named Kenneth Wray. The following year, Athens-Clarke County police officer Elmer Christian was shot and killed during a series of crimes. Hood was sentenced to life in prison without parole in July 2015.

When Hood appeared in court with new defense attorneys in 2012, he asked Haggard questions about the shooting death of the judge’s father.

Haggard’s father, Harold Phillip Haggard, was a 59-year-old salesman who was fatally shot in the chest in 1992 during an exchange of gunfire with two men who were trying to rob him outside a Georgia apartment complex, according to local media reports at the time. court documents.

After Haggard insisted he was there to do his job, Hood told the judge: “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, sir, but I’ll tell you this here: I’m willing to face the death penalty before I come here and allow someone to attack me,” the Banner-Herald reported. .”

“I think he’s a gentleman most of the time,” Hamilton told CNN, referring to Haggard at the hearing. “I think Jamie judged him in ways that judges never expect to be judged on. … But I have to say, there was nothing personal during the trial. There was nothing that I looked back on and said, ‘This won’t work.’ *fuck**kers.”

The former prosecutor on the case also had the same opinion.

“I think sometimes you can read the judges. Sometimes you can see that they’re probably angry and they have a right to be upset and everything else. They might be upset and you can probably tell they are, but they’re not.” Mauldin said of Haggard: “I don’t show it in any way. I think that’s just the way he is.

Before he was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice in 2011, Haggard told the Banner-Herald that his father’s murder did not change his perception of defendants in the courtroom.

“It happened, it was a tragedy, but it went through the court process and justice was served,” Haggard told the newspaper.

At the time, this was Haggard’s most high-profile case as a judge.

“I don’t have a feeling that it’s a big case one way or another,” the judge told the Banner-Herald. “It may be a big problem in other people’s minds, but I will take it as it is presented and deal with it.”

Hamilton, who worked for the Georgia Capital Defender at the time, believes Haggard would have handled the Ibarra case the same way.

“Do I think Haggard will be fair? Yes, but let me tell you, he will not give this man any favors and will punish him. He is a tough man. But I have no reason to think that he is any different to that man because of the color of his skin or his Hispanic ancestry.” “He would behave,” he said.

CNN’s Holly Yan, Rebekah Riess, Shawn Nottingham, Eric Levenson, Priscilla Alvarez, Rafael Romo, Kaanita Iyer, Jason Morris, David J. Lopez and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.

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