A judge delayed the sentence on Wednesday of the Mexican immigrant convicted of the murder of a student at the University of Iowa, Mollie Tibbetts, after a request from defense lawyers to give him more time to
investigate new leads that point to others. possible suspects
.
Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 27, was likely to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole this Thursday in a Poweshiek County court in the town of Montezuma.
The judge, Joel Yates, determined this Wednesday to delay the sentence until the hearings on the defense requests are held to
force the prosecutors to reveal information about other suspects and order a new trial
.
Yates said he would hold the first hearing on Thursday and would later set a hearing date on the granting of a new trial.
[The immigrant accused of the murder of Mollie Tibbetts testifies by surprise and points to two mysterious masked by the crime]
Prosecutors continue to believe Bahena Rivera is guilty, spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office Lynn Hicks said Tuesday.
Bahena Rivera was convicted in May by a first-degree murder jury in the stabbing death of Tibbetts, 20, who disappeared while jogging in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, in July 2018.
Prosecutors based their case on surveillance video showing Bahena Rivera driving near where Tibbetts disappeared while running and that
DNA tests showed there was blood from the woman in the trunk of her car
.
They also used a partial confession in which Bahena Rivera led investigators to a cornfield where her body was found a month after she disappeared.
File photo taken on May 27, 2021, of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, convicted in the July 2018 death of Mollie Tibbetts. JAP
Bahena Rivera, a dairy farm worker, claimed that those responsible for the murder were two masked men who forced him to drive them and dispose of Tibbetts' body at gunpoint.
Defense attorneys requested a retrial last week, claiming that two witnesses recently came forward independently to partially support Bahena Rivera's testimony.
Witnesses told investigators that a 21-year-old man with a history of violence against women had claimed responsibility for killing Tibbetts.
One of them said the man told him, while they were in a county jail, that
Tibbetts had been kidnapped and taken to a house
used for sex trafficking, before she was killed, according to Bahena Rivera's lawyers.
[The immigrant accused of the murder of Mollie Tibbetts testifies by surprise and points to two mysterious masked by the crime]
The man told the witness that the house was owned by a man in his 50s who ran the trafficking ring and that he
decided to have Tibbetts killed after pressure from authorities to locate her when she was missing
.
The man allegedly revealed that he and an associate followed a plan devised by the alleged homeowner to stab Tibbetts and charge a Hispanic man for his death.