Mollie Tibbetts case updates: Rivera jury deliberates after closings
May 27, 2021
9:44 a.m.: Prosecutor Scott Brown displayed to the jury a photo of a smiling Mollie Tibbetts and recounted the state's timeline of her final moments: "She crossed paths with him, and it ended her life," he said, pointing at defendant Cristhian Bahena Rivera. "She was attacked brutally by him. She was stabbed repeatedly by him. Can you imagine what that was like for her?"
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The video is “really irrefutable," the prosecutor said. "It is the thing, the piece of evidence that the police followed that broke this case, and led them to more evidence and more evidence that the defendant was the one who committed Mollie Tibbetts' murder."
Brown argued that Bahena Rivera realized he was in trouble once his car was spotted on the footage from the security camera. Though he allegedly blacked out during the actual killing, by taking police to the scene, "he's telling the officers that he did it, he's confessing," Brown said.
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Bahena Rivera said he hid Tibbetts' body and didn't tell police what had happened because the two men had threatened his former girlfriend and their daughter, and because, as an undocumented immigrant, he feared contact with law enforcement. Prosecutors on cross-examination pointed out many points before and during his interrogation when he could have gone to police for help, and cast doubt on the notion that two apparent strangers would need or want Bahena Rivera to take part in their conspiracy.
The 15-member jury, which includes three alternates, will have to decide which story they find more believable and whether the state's evidence proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Bahena Rivera killed Tibbetts "willfully, deliberately and with premeditation" to find him guilty of first-degree murder. If they do, the mandatory sentence is life in prison.
. No pressure, but I'll be around all day tomorrow.
