XPost: alt.fan.states.iowa, alt.politics.immigration, alt.journalism.newspapers XPost: sac.politics

Cristhian Bahena Rivera was sentenced Monday to life in prison
without the possibility of parole for the 2018 killing of
University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts.

Judge Joel D. Yates told Bahena Rivera, "You, and you alone,
forever changed the lives of those who loved Mollie Tibbetts.
And for that, you and you alone will receive the following
sentence."

Bahena Rivera, wearing a mask and headphones, was stoic as Yates
told him he would serve a "lifetime sentence with no eligibility
for parole."

Bahena Rivera, 27, was sentenced to the maximum penalty under
the law in a high-profile case that also became politicized, in
part because of the defendant's status as an undocumented
immigrant.

Earlier this month, Yates rejected a request for a new trial for
Bahena Rivera, who was convicted May 28 of first-degree murder
in the death of 20-year-old Tibbetts.

Yates dismissed Bahena Rivera’s claim that newly discovered
evidence implicated other alleged suspects in Tibbetts' slaying.

In a 13-page decision, Yates said the evidence wasn’t new nor
would it change the outcome of the trial. A jury deliberated for
seven hours over two days before convicting Bahena Rivera.

Yates also rejected claims by Bahena Rivera’s lawyers that
prosecutors suppressed evidence.

At the trial, Bahena Rivera took the witness stand and claimed
two masked men were responsible for the murder but forced him to
participate at gunpoint.

Tibbetts’ homicide became a hot-button political issue.

Bahena Rivera, a farmhand, led investigators to Tibbetts’ body
in a Brooklyn, Iowa, cornfield nearly one month after she went
jogging July 18, 2018, and vanished.

She had been stabbed between seven and 12 times in the chest,
neck and skull, according to the prosecution.

On Monday, before Bahena Rivera was sentenced, a member of the
prosecutor's office read a victim's impact statement from
Tibbetts' mother, Laura Calderwood.

"Mollie was a young woman who simply wanted to go on a quiet run
on the evening of July 18th, and you chose to violently and
sadistically end that life," the statement read.

Calderwood also said in the statement how difficult it was to
tell loved ones in her family about her daughter's death.

There was not an instance more difficult than when she had to
tell her mother, and Mollie's grandmother, Judy Calderwood, who
had faith her beloved granddaughter would be found alive, Laura
Calderwood said in the statement.

"I very quietly and softly said, 'Mom, I have some bad news.
They found Mollie's body this morning. ... Judy Calderwood's
unwavering faith had been brutally shattered by your senseless
act of violence."

The case against Rivera drew national attention when then-
President Donald Trump and other Republicans argued the tragedy
was made possible by weak immigration laws.

Tibbetts' family pushed back against that narrative and pleaded
with politicians not to invoke her name to advance an anti-
immigration agenda.

"Sadly, others have ignored our request. They have instead
chosen to callously distort and corrupt Mollie’s tragic death to
advance a cause she vehemently opposed. I encourage the debate
on immigration; there is great merit in its reasonable outcome,"
her father, Rob Tibbetts, wrote in the Des Moines Register.

"But do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she
believed were profoundly racist."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-convicted-murdering- iowa-student-mollie-tibbetts-sentenced-life-prison-n1278038

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