Illegal Mexican farm laborer accused of murdering Iowa jogger Mollie Tibbetts now claims his confession was coerced because he was questioned after working 12-hour shift scooping poop
Cristhian Bahena Rivera s lawyer Jennifer Frese said authorities conducted an incomplete investigation into 20-year-old Tibbetts death in July 2018
His defense began Tuesday by questioning the confession and DNA evidence
Frese told jurors: He wasn t in an interview; he was in an interrogation
Bahena Rivera´s defense described him as a hard-working, family-centered immigrant from Mexico who was pressured into making a false confession
They also kept working to raise suspicion about Tibbetts´ boyfriend, Dalton Jack, who testified again Tuesday about their up-and-down relationship
A defense attorney for accused murderer
Cristhian Bahena Rivera pleaded for justice in the killing of college student
Mollie Tibbetts, 20, by suggesting a shoddy police investigation, cultural clashes, and an unfair interrogation led the defendant to falsely confess to his involvement in Tibbetts’ death.
The defense chose tactically to deliver the 10-minute-long opening statement after the state concluded its case in chief.
“Mollie Tibbetts deserves justice; her family deserves justice; but so does Cristhian Bahena Rivera,” defense attorney
Jennifer Frese told the jury. “We won’t just rely on the failure of the case beyond a reasonable doubt. We intend to bring you witnesses, and that’s because you need to hear what they have to say.”
The prosecution has spent four days presenting to jurors a detailed chronology of the investigation that began with Mollie Tibbetts’ disappearance and the arrest of Cristhian Bahena Rivera five weeks later.
Cristhian Bahena Rivera listens to testimony that has been translated into Spanish by an interpreter during his trial in Davenport, Iowa, last Thursday. Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Mollie Tibbetts. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette via AP, Pool)
DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) Prosecutors rested their case Monday in the murder trial of Cristhian Bahena Rivera after four days of testimony that they say revealed clear evidence that points exclusively to the Mexican immigrant dairy farm worker as the man who murdered Mollie Tibbetts in June 2018 and left her body in a remote cornfield.