Cristhian Bahena Rivera in court. (Court TV screenshot)
The man convicted of murdering Mollie Tibbetts in 2018 as she went for a run in Brooklyn will not get a new trial and is scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison.
Attorneys for Cristhian Bahena Rivera said in July that they’d heard from someone who claimed another man had confessed to the crime. Judge Joel Yates said that confession was significantly at odds with the account Bahena gave during his trial. Bahena testified two masked men forced him to participate in the crime and it was one of them who killed Tibbetts.
At a hearing last month, Bahena’s attorney’s also sought to link Tibbett’s murder to an alleged sex trafficking ring and two other missing person cases. The judge, in his ruling, said those arguments were not convincing.
Bahena’s sentencing is now scheduled for August 30. His first degree-murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.