Jose Ibarra is demanding a new trial after Laken Riley’s murder conviction

The violent Tren de Aragua gangbanger who brutally murdered Georgia nursing student Laken Riley has asked a judge for a new trial after being sentenced to life in prison last month for the crime that shocked the nation.

Lawyers for Jose Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, filed a two-page court filing Tuesday asking Judge H. Patrick Haggard to overturn the verdict and sentence he handed down during the trial.

Haggard’s decision contradicted “the law” and “the evidence” and the judge “made additional legal errors that required a new trial,” the filing said.

The court filing does not elaborate, but asks the judge to allow the defense to “review the facts and circumstances” during the trial, potentially fleshing out the motion at a later date.

Requesting a new trial is a necessary first step for the defense before it can file an appeal.

On November 20, Haggard convicted Ibarra on all 10 counts he faced, including murder, premeditated murder, kidnapping with bodily harm, aggravated assault with intent to commit rape and the peeping tom charge.

Over the course of a four-day trial that featured 29 prosecution witnesses and just three defense witnesses, prosecutors argued that Ibarra, 26, brutally beat and suffocated Riley, 22, on Feb. 22 as she stood nearby of the University of Georgia campus jogged in Athens.

Riley – who recently transferred from the University of Georgia to Augusta University to study nursing – allegedly fought for her life for about 18 minutes against her killer, who prosecutors say planned to sexually assault her despite her violent actions had fought back.

Ibarra’s fingerprint was found on Riley’s phone and his DNA was under her fingernails, prosecutors say the evidence shows.

But Ibarra’s lawyers said the fingerprint and DNA evidence analysis was unreliable and tried to attribute the murder to Ibarra’s brother Diego Ibarra, claiming Jose’s body did not match the one in the surveillance footage.