Cristhian Bahena Rivera’s request for a new trial in the killing of college student
Mollie Tibbetts.
“In reviewing the evidence and testimony provided at trial, the court finds the verdict was not contrary to the weight of the evidence,” wrote Judge
Joel Yates in a filing obtained by The Associated Press.
Bahena Rivera, 26, confessed to investigators that he saw Tibbetts, 20, while she was out jogging, approached her, blacked out, and then hid her dead body in a cornfield, prosecutors said. At trial, his defense insisted this was a false confession. Bahena Rivera testified that two unknown men appeared in his living room armed with a knife and gun, forced him to drive to Brooklyn, Iowa under a threat to his daughter and ex-girlfriend, and had him drive with Tibbetts’s body in the trunk of his car. In other words, the defense argued Bahena Rivera was the fall guy and that his confession was false.
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The judge overseeing the case against Cristhian Bahena Rivera voiced skepticism repeatedly Thursday as the former farmhand s defense attorneys tried to prove there are grounds to grant him a new trial.
Bahena was convicted in May of first-degree murder in the 2018 abduction and stabbing of Mollie Tibbetts. In the week before he was scheduled to be sentenced, his attorneys filed motions to delay that hearing and order a new trial, arguing that new evidence had emerged pointing to additional possible suspects.
Thursday s hearing, set to hear that evidence, involved multiple witnesses and affidavits building out the defense s new theory: that unknown parties had kidnapped Tibbetts at the behest of a drug dealer and accused sex trafficker named Michael Lowe, and that a man named Gavin Jones and another associate, Dalton Hansen, had later killed Tibbetts and framed Bahena after investigators seeking the vanished University of Iowa student came too close to where she w
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Cristhian Bahena Rivera deserves a new trial in the 2018 killing of Iowa college student
Mollie Tibbetts included testimony from law enforcement agents who were in some instances loathe to the fact that the defense was calling their assessments into question.
Bahena Rivera’s attorneys,
Chad Frese and
Jennifer Frese, recently filed motions for a new trial and to arrest a judgment of conviction against the defendant. Bahena Rivera has yet to be sentenced because his defense team says new tips provided to law enforcement toward the conclusion of his trial warrant a reexamination of the case.
Bahena Rivera claimed at trial that he lied to the authorities when he admitted he killed Tibbetts and dumped her body in a corn field. Rather, he testified that two unknown men appeared at his house early one evening and ordered him to drive until they encountered Tibbetts jogging. One of the two men exited his car and presumably killed Tibbetts; that man then returned to his vehicle and
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