“A judge in Iowa considered new motions Thursday filed by the defense for Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a Mexican national who was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts. Tibbetts, 20, disappeared in July 2018 while on a run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. Bahena Rivera, 27, who came to the United States illegally as a teenager, led investigators to her body in a remote cornfield about a month after she vanished.”

“He was expected to get life without parole, but Judge Joel Yates delayed sentencing Wednesday after the defense came forward with two new witnesses. The defense motions requested a new trial and asked the judge to compel prosecutors to provide more information on other suspects investigated in the death of Mollie Tibbetts allegedly linked to a sex trafficking ring. The defense’s first new witness, an inmate at a county jail, told investigators that a fellow inmate, Gavin Jones, confessed to him that he and another man stabbed Tibbetts, and that Bahena Rivera was framed. According to Bahena Rivera’s lawyer, Jennifer Frese, Jones allegedly admitted he was involved with a ‘trap house’ and Tibbetts was abducted for purposes of sex trafficking. The second new witness, Jones’ ex-girlfriend, told a local sheriff’s office that she was in a car with Jones a month earlier when he said, ‘That Mexican shouldn’t be in jail for killing Mollie because I raped her and killed her,’ according to Iowa News Now. In court on Thursday, Frese said the ex-girlfriend was granted a protective order against him after Jones allegedly held a gun to her head” Fox News reports.

This would sure be an interesting development, especially after in August 2018 Newt Gingrich emailed Axios to tell them “If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble. If we can be blocked by Manafort-Cohen, etc., then GOP could lose [the House] badly” which showed just how sincerely their hearts ached for Tibbetts’ family having lost their daughter. Then there was some Neo-Nazis who pushed a robocall about her death. Some asshole on The Hill even changed his Disqus name to “Midterms for Mollie” at one point.

So the reaction – if it’s proven in court that the guy was indeed innocent all along – would be something to watch, given how much the murder fed into the xenophobic batshittery of the lead up to the 2018 Midterms. Then again it might not get any notice on the right at all since fanboys these days only really seem to be obsessed with imaginary sex traffickers and not real ones.