STORY: "Cristhian Bahena Rivera hearing: Judge weighs new trial for man convicted of killing Mollie Tibbetts" by Reporter William Morris, published by The Des Moines Register on July 27, 2021.
GIST: "Judge Joel Yates is hearing arguments Tuesday on whether to grant Cristhian Bahena Rivera's request for a new trial in the 2018 murder of Mollie Tibbetts.
Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, disappeared while jogging near her hometown of Brooklyn, and her remains were found more than a month later hidden in a cornfield. Bahena, a local farmhand, was charged with murder after he led investigators to her body. He was found guilty in May after a two-week trial.
Updates from Tuesday's hearing:
1:20 p.m.: The hearing ended shortly after a lunch break. Judge Yates told the parties he would consider their arguments and issue a ruling as soon as possible.
Noon: The hearing has paused for lunch until 1:15 p.m. The defense has introduced several affidavits, including one from Lyndsey Voss, the former girlfriend of Gavin Jones who allegedly heard him admit to killing Mollie Tibbetts, although those documents are not currently available to the public.
The defense questioned several additional witnesses, including a woman close to the Xavior Harrelson family who spoke about their connection to James Lowe, and a Mahaska County detective who investigated the 2019 allegations into sex trafficking at Lowe's residence in New Sharon.
Prosecutors repeatedly objected to these lines of questioning, arguing both irrelevance and the danger of tainting the ongoing investigation into Xavior Harrelson's disappearance.
Judge Yates allowed witnesses to answer most of the defense attorneys' questions, but told prosecutors that "I’m sympathetic to your plight and I tend to agree with it."
He also said later that "I have my doubts about the relevancy" of the testimony and urged the defense to bring the discussion back to the question of a new trial for Bahena swiftly.
Defense attorney Jennifer Frese suggested that all the pieces will fit together — a Tama County deputy who lives near where Tibbetts was found, who she suggested might be part of a sex trafficking ring; allegations that Lowe had trafficked or attempted to traffic multiple women; and possible connections between Lowe's reported drug dealing and cartel sex trafficking.
"I can’t connect the dots unless I present a case," she said.
10:30 a.m.: The hearing began with testimony from several witnesses, including Arne Maki, who described a conversation he had with Gavin Jones while both were incarcerated in Keokuk County. According to Maki, Jones claimed he had killed Mollie Tibbetts, and described living in a drug house and seeing Tibbetts restrained there before being told to kill her and hide her body.
Maki, who at the time was new to Iowa and unfamiliar with the Tibbetts investigation, said he did not believe Jones' statements until Bahena's trial, when he saw a Fox News clip including testimony from Bahena that he thought corroborated what Jones had said.
The defense also continues to receive new tips and evidence. A Poweshiek County Sheriff's deputy described a call Monday evening in which a local sex offender, complaining about a conflict with the mother of Xavior Harrelson, claimed that he had heard third-hand that Harrelson's mother had also seen Tibbetts at a "trap house" in New Sharon.
Harrelson is an 11-year-old boy from Montezuma who has been missing for two months.
Prior to the court's midmorning break, defense attorney Jennifer Frese was questioning Trent Vileta, the DCI case agent for the Tibbetts investigation, about various tips and leads received after her disappearance. Prosecutors have repeatedly objected, saying there is no relevance or connection between any of the threads the defense is pulling and Tibbetts' disappearance, but Judge Joel Yates has allowed the defense to continue, saying he would let them "play it out.”
Previously:
On July 8, Bahena's attorneys filed a motion seeking a new trial, saying two new witnesses had come forward after hearing Bahena's trial testimony — that he'd been forced to help two masked men who threatened his family to find and kill Tibbetts — both saying that another man, Gavin Jones, had confessed to them on separate occasions he had been the one to kill Tibbetts.
In subsequent filings, Bahena's attorneys alleged the state had failed to provide relevant evidence, including about another man, James Lowe, who was investigated but not charged in a sex trafficking case in 2019 in Mahaska County, who they argue might have been connected both to Tibbetts' death and other disappearances in the area, including the May 2021 disappearance of 11-year-old Xavior Harrelson.
Yates denied a request to force prosecutors to turn over information about that and other investigations, and scheduled a daylong hearing starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday for the motion for retrial. Court filings show at least five subpoenas have been issued for the hearing, and that defense attorneys intend to bring in evidence of other criminal allegations against Jones, who has denied any involvement with Tibbetts' death.
In a motion filed by the state's prosecutors Monday, Assistant Attorney General Scott Brown and Poweshiek County Attorney Bart Klaver asked that Yates quash subpoenas issued by the defense to Mahaska County Sheriff Russell Van Renterghem, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Adam DeCamp and any other law enforcement officer or agency that might be involved in sex trafficking investigations from January 2018 to the present.
In the motion, prosecutors argue that the subpoenas are "overbroad and not related to this case," quoting from Yates' July 18 decision on a previous motion that "such requests are a 'fishing expedition'" for information "no relevance to or connection with the disappearance and murder of Mollie Tibbetts.""
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