Who is the Georgia judge who will decide fate of migrant accused of killing Laken Riley?

(CNN) — The judge who will decide the fate of an undocumented migrant accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley is a no-nonsense, silvery-white-haired jurist whose father was killed in an armed robbery.

Starting Friday, state Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard will preside over the trial of 26-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan migrant who authorities said crossed the border illegally before Riley’s killing in the college town of Athens thrusted him into the raging national debate over immigration.

Haggard, appointed to the Superior Court bench in 2011 by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, is no stranger to high-profile cases. A year after his appointment to the judicial circuit that covers Athens, Haggard was assigned the death-penalty trial of an admitted cop killer, Jamie Hood, who represented himself.

During a pretrial court appearance, Hood asked Haggard – who is White – if the man who fatally shot the judge’s father in 1992 was Black, according to the Athens Banner-Herald. When Haggard said he was, the Black defendant suggested the fatal shooting could affect his handling of the case.

“I killed a White man,” Hood said, according to the Banner-Herald. “Professional folks say it don’t have no bearing on what’s going on, but in this neck of the woods it do.”

Newell Hamilton Jr., who was part of Hood’s defense team at the trial, recalled that day in 2012.

“Man, you should have seen Judge Haggard’s face. Holy sh*t, he turned red,” Hamilton told CNN this week. “You should have seen how angry. You’re talking about, you know, the red face. … He got pissed.”

Still, Hamilton said, Haggard was careful in how he responded, avoiding the appearance of bias.

“’Judge, I got a question,’” Hamilton recalled the defendant saying. “He says, ‘I want you to tell me … man to man … the fact that a Black man killed your father, you’re not going to hold that against me.’ The judge turned red. Then he says, ‘I will tell you, as a judge, I have no bias.’”

The Banner-Herald quoted Haggard’s response: “Mr. Hood, I come here to do my job.”

And that is how Haggard is expected to handle what will be a closely watched murder case that has become a flashpoint in the bitter debate over the border crisis, according to both Hamilton and the man who prosecuted the cop shooter a dozen years ago.

“I don’t recall a time that he ever lost his cool during that trial,” Kenneth Mauldin, the former prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Georgia School of Law, told CNN. “Judge Haggard maintained his poise and judicial demeanor, as you should, and maintained that temperament throughout the process. … He was remarkably fair.”

CNN has sought comment from Haggard.

Prosecutors to seek life in prison without parole

Riley, a 22-year-old student at the Augusta University College of Nursing campus in Athens, was killed February 22 while out for a run on the University of Georgia’s Athens campus.

Ibarra on Tuesday waived his right to a trial by jury and agreed to a bench trial, leaving Haggard to decide his guilt or innocence. The prosecution agreed, and Haggard approved the waiver. Through his translator, Ibarra told the court he understood that he can’t reverse his decision, which came a day before jury selection was set to begin.

For the bench trial, evidence and witness or expert testimony will be presented to the judge rather than a jury. Defense attorneys requested a bench trial after the judge denied a motion requesting some evidence in the case be suppressed ahead of trial, according to court records.

In a bench trial, the judge alone decides the facts of the case and application of the law. Defendants opt for bench trials in some cases because a judge is perceived to be able to dismiss negative publicity and press coverage and handle the facts of violent crimes with less emotion than a jury, according to CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

CNN has sought comment from Ibarra’s attorneys as well as the office of Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez. During Tuesday’s hearing, Haggard forbade attorneys and the defendant from speaking with the media.

Ibarra was indicted in May on 10 counts, including charges related to Riley’s death and another incident in which Ibarra allegedly went to a University of Georgia apartment building the same day as the killing, looked through a window and spied on a student, his indictment states.

Prosecutors intend to seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if Ibarra is convicted of the most serious charges, Gonzalez said, according to court records.

“Would I ever put anything in the hands of a judge like that? The answer is, ‘I’m just not wired that way,’” Hamilton said of the decision to have a bench trial in Ibarra’s case. “I’m always going to trust a jury over a judge. … But I will say this: I don’t remember Judge Haggard being unfair.”

Mauldin said Ibarra’s attorneys would not have asked for a bench trial if they felt Haggard could not be fair to their client.

Haggard is now serving his third term in Superior Court. He was the chief judge from 2017 to 2020. He previously was a municipal court judge for the city of Winterville from 1992 to 2011, according to his judicial web page. He practiced both criminal and civil law in the Athens area and was a certified mediator.

In 2013, Haggard started the Western Circuit Veterans Treatment Court, which provides therapy, substance abuse treatment and other services to veterans with criminal cases, according to the page. The judge is a member of Athens First United Methodist Church.

“Judge Haggard will treat this man fairly,” Hamilton said, referring to Ibarra. “I think he will give him a fair trial. He is going to be hard. I think he will give no slack. … That is my experience with Judge Haggard. He was a gentleman at all times, but he didn’t give us any slack.”

A firestorm over crime and illegal immigration

Ibarra’s case reignited the raging national debate over immigration.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump alleged the Biden administration’s immigration policies contributed to Riley’s death. Ahead of his election, Trump vowed to conduct a large-scale deportation of undocumented migrants. Riley’s parents attended a Trump rally in March and met with Trump backstage, according to co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita.

Democrats also invoked Riley’s name. While campaigning for presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October, former President Bill Clinton supported President Joe Biden’s attempt to secure the border and criticized Trump for scuttling a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year.

During her presidential campaign, Harris vowed to revive the bill and sign if elected. Clinton said the bill would have led to “total vetting before people got in” at the US-Mexico border. “Now, Trump killed the bill,” Clinton said, before referring to Riley’s death.

Ibarra was arrested in September 2022 on suspicion of entering the US illegally, and was “paroled and released for further processing,” according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In September 2023 he was arrested by police in New York City and charged with “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation,” ICE said in a news release. But police released Ibarra “before a detainer could be issued,” according to ICE. Asked about Ibarra’s arrest and release in New York City, NYPD’s public information office told CNN via email: “There are no arrests on file based on the information provided in your inquiry.”

By February 2024, Ibarra was living in Athens, home to the University of Georgia, where Riley was killed.

She went for a morning run February 22 on the UGA campus, where she had studied until May 2023 before switching to Augusta University. The search for Riley began after authorities received a call around noon from a friend who said she had not returned from her jog, UGA Police Chief Jeff Clark said. Her body was later found near a lake.

Ibarra was connected to Riley’s killing based on campus security camera footage, physical evidence and information from the community, Clark said.

With the case now fueling a political firestorm over crime and illegal immigration, Haggard will face close scrutiny for his handling of one of the most politically and racially charged trials since he oversaw Hood’s murder trial nearly a decade ago.

Ibarra struck Riley in the head with a rock multiple times and asphyxiated her, according to his indictment. He was arrested the day after Riley’s death. Authorities have said there is no evidence Ibarra and Riley knew each other, and have described the killing as a “crime of opportunity.”

Hood was convicted of 36 counts, including murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping, carjacking, according to his appeal, which was rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2021. The charges against Hood stemmed from the 2010 shooting death of a man named Kenneth Wray and the fatal shooting of Athens-Clarke County police Officer Elmer Christian during a series of crimes the following year. Hood was sentenced to life without parole in July 2015.

During the 2012 court appearance with his new defense attorneys, Hood asked Haggard about the fatal shooting of the judge’s father.

Haggard’s father, Harold Phillip Haggard, was a 59-year-old salesman who was fatally shot in the chest in 1992 as he exchanged gunfire with two men trying to rob him outside a Georgia apartment complex, according to local press reports at the time and court documents.

After Haggard insisted that he was there to do his job, Hood told the judge, according to the Banner-Herald: “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, sir, but I’m going to tell you this here: I’m willing to face the death sentence before I come in here and let someone railroad me.”

“I think he was a gentleman most of the time,” Hamilton told CNN, referring to Haggard at the trial. “I think Jamie tried him in ways judges don’t ever expect to be tried. … But I have to say during trial, there was nothing personal. There was nothing where I went back and said, ‘That no-good m*therf**ker.’”

The former prosecutor on the case agreed.

“I think sometimes you can read judges. Sometimes you can see they’re probably steaming, you know, and have a right to get upset and everything else. They may be upset and you could probably tell they might be, but they don’t show it whatsoever. I think he’s like that,” Mauldin said of Haggard.

Before being sworn in as a Superior Court judge in 2011, Haggard told the Banner-Herald that his father’s murder had not changed his perception of defendants in his courtroom.

“It happened, it was a tragedy, but it went through the court process and there was justice,” Haggard told the paper.

At the time, it was Haggard’s highest-profile case as a judge.

“I don’t have feelings one way or another about that being a big case,” the judge told the Banner-Herald. “It may be big in other people’s minds, but I will take it as it is presented and deal with it.”

Hamilton, who at the time was working for the Georgia Capital Defender, believes Haggard will handle the Ibarra trial the same way.

“Do I think Haggard will be fair? Yes, but let me tell you, he ain’t going to cut that guy any breaks and he is going to sentence him. He’s a hard dude. But I have no reason to think that he would treat that man differently because of the color of his skin or the fact that he was Hispanic,” he said.

CNN’s Holly Yan, Rebekah Riess, Shawn Nottingham, Eric Levenson, Priscilla Alvarez, Rafael Romo, Kaanita Iyer, Jason Morris, David J. Lopez and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.

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