A state senator is demanding that Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr file an emergency motion to intervene and demand the death penalty against Laken Riley’s killer, but Carr’s office maintains that he does not have the legal authority to do so.

District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, for the Western Judicial District encompassing Athens, previously wrote in court documents that she would not pursue the death penalty, citing “collateral consequences to undocumented defendants.” 

Jose Ibarra, a 26-year-old illegal immigrant who received taxpayer-funded flights, was found guilty Wednesday of stalking, raping and murdering Riley in February. The nursing student, out for an early morning run on the University of Georgia campus, fought her attacker for approximately 18 minutes but died from blunt force trauma. Ibarra bashed her skull with a rock after dragging her off a wooded trail, prosecutors said. 

“I am officially calling on Attorney General Chris Carr to file an emergency motion to intervene and demand the death penalty for the murderer of Laken Riley,” state Sen. Colton Moore, a Republican, wrote on X. “District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez let her radical political agenda stand in the way of justice. By refusing to seek the death penalty, she denied Laken’s family, friends, and community the full measure of justice they deserve.”

“I’m very concerned, you know, about any student going to the University of Georgia when this area is a sanctuary city now. And, you know, these killers, these guys can come in here, and they don’t have to worry about capital punishment,” Moore told Fox News Digital. “Probably $2 million is what we’re going to have to pay as taxpayers to give him three meals and a cot for the rest of his life. You know, three hots and a cot.” 

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A spokesperson for Carr’s office stated that the state attorney general does not have jurisdiction and, therefore, cannot intervene, but Moore argued otherwise. 

“I can send you a copy of the Constitution of Georgia, section 3, paragraph 4. It clearly states that the attorney general has jurisdiction in any felony case,” Moore told Fox News Digital. “And the state, I mean the attorney general’s office, has intervened in cases before. You know, he is the chief law enforcement officer of our state. He should have known that the district attorney is one of the most liberal district attorneys in the country, that she wasn’t going to pursue the death penalty. Why even have capital punishment in our state?” 

“I mean clear evidence, it’s not like we’re killing an innocent person here,” Moore said. “I mean, his DNA was underneath Laken Riley’s fingernails. It was very clear he’s the perpetrator. He’s the guilty one. And we have capital punishment in our state for a reason. And I can’t imagine another crime that would suit capital punishment like his crime. He’s the chief law enforcement officer, it’s clearly stated in the constitution that he has jurisdiction.” 

Regarding the part of Georgia’s Constitution that Moore cited, Carr’s office said it does not say that the Attorney General has jurisdiction in any felony case, just to represent the state before the Supreme Court in death penalty cases.

District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez (Joshua L. Jones/USA TODAY NETWORK/File)

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In a separate statement reacting to the verdict, Carr said Riley’s death “should have never occurred” and “it is absolutely gut-wrenching to hear the evidence that Laken Riley fought for her life and fought for her dignity, and the statements made by her family and friends in court break my heart.” 

“We’re grateful to Sheila Ross with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for ensuring that a conviction was obtained, and we will continue to pray for all who knew and loved Laken,” Carr said. 

Gonzalez lost her re-election bid this month. She handed the prosecution of Ibarra over to Sheila Ross in February.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

In response to an inquiry from Fox News Digital regarding Gonzalez’s reasoning for not seeking the death penalty, the DA’s office told Fox News Digital that the reference in court documents to collateral consequences for undocumented defendants is “DA Gonzalez’s stance on sentencing in general.”

“Life without parole is an appropriately serious sentence and is a decision supported by the family, as heard in the impact statements delivered by Laken Riley’s family and friends during yesterday’s sentencing,” a spokesperson for Gonzalez added. 

An Alabama inmate convicted in the 1994 killing of a female hitchhiker cursed at the prison warden and made obscene gestures with his hands shortly before he was put to death Thursday evening in the nation’s third execution using nitrogen gas.

Carey Dale Grayson, 50, was executed at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama. He was one of four teens at the time convicted of killing Vickie Deblieux, 37, as she was hitchhiking through Alabama on the way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. The woman was attacked, beaten and thrown off a cliff.

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Strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed gas mask strapped to his face, Grayson raised both of his middle fingers and cursed at the prison warden. When the prison warden asked for his final statement, Grayson responded with an obscenity. The warden turned off the microphone. Grayson appeared to address the witness room with state officials.

It was unclear when the gas began flowing. Grayson shook and pulled against the gurney restraints. His sheet-wrapped legs at one point lifted off the gurney in the air. He then clenched his fist and appeared to struggle to try to gesture again, then took a series of gasping breaths for several minutes before becoming still.

Grayson was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas earlier this year to carry out some executions. The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the person’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen.

The execution was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Grayson’s request for a stay. His attorneys had argued that the method needed more scrutiny before being used again.

Deblieux’s mutilated body was found at the bottom of a bluff near Odenville, Alabama, on Feb. 26, 1994. She was hitchhiking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, when the four teens offered her a ride. Prosecutors said the teens took her to a wooded area and attacked and beat her. They threw her off a cliff and later returned to mutilate her body.

A medical examiner testified that Deblieux’s face was so fractured that she was identified by an earlier X-ray of her spine. Investigators said the teens were identified as suspects after one of them showed a friend one of Deblieux’s severed fingers and boasted about the killing.

Gov. Kay Ivey issued a statement minutes after Thursday’s execution saying she was praying for the murder victim’s loved ones to find closure and healing still decades after the crime.

Carey Dale Grayson (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP)

“Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux’s journey to her mother’s house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men. She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered,” Ivey said in the statement.

Grayson’s crimes “were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia (bears) no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced,” she added.

Grayson was the only one of the four teens who faced a death sentence since the other teens were under 18 at the time of the killing. Grayson was 19. Two of the teens were initially sentenced to death but those sentences were set aside when the Supreme Court banned the execution of offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of their crimes. Another teen involved in Deblieux’s killing was sentenced to life in prison.

Grayson’s final appeals had focused on a call for more scrutiny of the nitrogen gas method. His lawyers argued that the person experiences “conscious suffocation” and that the first two nitrogen executions did not result in swift unconsciousness and death as the state had promised. Lawyers for the Alabama attorney general’s office asked the justices to let the execution proceed, saying a lower court found Grayson’s claims speculative.

Alabama maintains the method is constitutional. But critics — citing how the first two people executed shook for several minutes — say the method needs more scrutiny, particularly if other states follow Alabama’s path.

“The normalization of gas suffocation as an execution method is deeply troubling,” said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, a group seeking to abolish the death penalty.

No state other than Alabama has used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out a death sentence. In 2018, Alabama became the third state — along with Oklahoma and Mississippi — to authorize the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners.

Some states are looking for new ways to execute inmates because the drugs used in lethal injections, the most common execution method in the United States, are increasingly difficult to find.

Former Kentucky Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines was indicted Thursday in the shooting death of a judge in his chambers. 

A Letcher County grand jury indicted Stines on one count of murder of a public official on Thursday, according to a press release from Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office. His arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 25 at noon, according to online court records.

Stines, 43, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after authorities said he shot his longtime colleague, District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, multiple times on Sept. 19 in an attack caught on surveillance footage.

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Stines pleaded not guilty on Sept. 25. He formally resigned as sheriff at the end of September after receiving a letter from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky General Counsel S. Travis Mayo urged him to do so. He is being held two counties away at Leslie County Jail, police said.

It is still unclear what motivated the former sheriff to pull the trigger. 

Kentucky State Police Det. Clayton Stamper testified at the preliminary hearing that the two men had eaten lunch together with a group in the hours before the shooting, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. 

According to Stamper, Stines attempted to call his daughter on his own phone, then on Mullins’ phone.

“Our investigators seized the two cellphones, and they’re being analyzed,” Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart previously told the Daily Mail.

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District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, left, was killed by Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines, 43, in his judge’s chambers, authorities said. (Kentucky Court of Justice ;Letcher County Sheriff’s Office)

“I was told that the judge made a statement to Mickey about, ‘Do we need to meet private in my chambers?’” Stamper testified, The Associated Press reported.

“It could be, but I don’t know that for a fact,” Stamper said when asked whether Stines was motivated to shoot Mullins based on what he saw on the judge’s phone.

“I talked to him, but he didn’t say nothing about why this had happened,” Stamper said, according to the AP. “But he was calm… Basically, all he said was, ‘Treat me fair.’”

NEW VIDEO SHOWS KENTUCKY SHERIFF POINTING GUN AT JUDGE BEFORE ALLEGED FATAL SHOOTING

Former Letcher County, Kentucky, Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines wipes his eyes as he listens to testimony during his arraignment at the Morgan County Courthouse in West Liberty, Kentucky, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Stines is accused in the shooting death of Ky. District Judge Kevin Mullins. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)

When Stines was taken into custody, he allegedly told another officer, “they’re trying to kidnap my wife and kid,” Stamper said.

Days earlier, Stines was deposed in a lawsuit filed by two women, one of whom alleged that a deputy forced her to have sex inside the same judge’s chambers where the shooting took place. The woman claimed the deputy repeatedly sexually assaulted her for six months in exchange for staying out of jail.

The lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “deliberate indifference in failing to adequately train and supervise” the deputy.

This booking photo provided by Leslie County Detention Center in Kentucky on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024 shows Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines. (Leslie County Detention Center via AP)

Stines’ defense attorney, Jeremy Bartley, told People that the shooting “was not something that was planned and occurred in the heat of passion.”

“For us, the highest level of culpability should be manslaughter based on the partial defense of extreme emotional disturbance,” Bartley said.

The shooting in the city of Whitesburg has shaken the community of Letcher County, Kentucky, where Stines served as a bailiff in Mullins’ court before becoming sheriff in 2018. 

“We’re all in a state of shock over it,” Garnard Kincer Jr., Mullins’ friend and former mayor of Jenkins, told People. “It practically immobilized us. We just can’t believe it happened.”