Picked the wrong county to kill someone in.
The man charged in the killing of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts requested his trial be moved out of Poweshiek County and into a county with more minority representation in its jury pool.
Attorneys for Cristhian Bahena Rivera on Friday filed a motion for change of venue, arguing that existing prejudice in Poweshiek County makes it likely “a fair and impartial trial cannot be preserved with a jury selected from that county,” according to court documents.
Rivera’s first-degree murder trial has been scheduled to begin Sept. 3 at Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma.
Poweshiek County’s connections to the case are plentiful: It’s where Rivera worked and lived, where 20-year-old Tibbetts grew up, where she went missing while jogging in her hometown of Brooklyn in July, and where her body was discovered in a cornfield after more than a month-long search that drew national attention.
Months later, emotions and opinions surrounding Tibbett’s death “do not appear to have cooled,” Rivera’s attorneys wrote.