The jury that will sit on the Cristhian Bahena Rivera trial has been selected.
Bahena Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in the 2018 death of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student.
Twelve jurors and three alternates, made up of eight women and seven men, have been instructed by Judge Joel Yates to report back for opening statements Wednesday at 8:30 a.m., according to KCRG-TV and the Law & Crime Network.
The jury was selected over the course of two days at the Davenport River Center; they began with 175 people and whittled it down to 15 by Tuesday afternoon.
Among the array of interview questions, the defense zeroed in on some topics regarding police matters, asking whether police should be allowed to take shortcuts and to consider whether police were under pressure to solve the case.
Prospective jurors had been warned that the trial would include graphic evidence and would be emotionally difficult to see and hear. The prosecution said there would be photographs and testimony about the injuries she sustained.
Back on July 18, 2018, Tibbetts went for a run near her boyfriend's home in Brooklyn, Iowa. Prosecutors say Bahena Rivera followed her and killed her after she threatened to call police. Her body was discovered one month later, after then-24-year-old Bahena Rivera, led investigators to her body early Tuesday in a cornfield outside of Brooklyn, Iowa.
The trial was moved to Scott County in an attempt to provide a more diverse jury.
