ATHENS, Ga. >> On a Thursday morning in February, prosecutors said, Jose Antonio Ibarra lurked on the University of Georgia’s campus with one intention: to prey on women. He wore a black hoodie and a hat and disposable kitchen gloves. He peeked in a woman’s window. Then he went to a wooded trail, where he came across Laken Riley, who was out for a run.

In the months since Riley, 22, was killed, her case has captured attention far beyond Georgia. Her name was invoked in the bitter partisan fight over immigration as soon as Ibarra, a migrant from Venezuela who entered the country illegally, was charged in her killing.

But as Ibarra’s trial got underway Friday, prosecutors did not examine his life leading up to that morning on the trail in Athens, Georgia, so much as the terror and agony that they said he had inflicted.

They described in haunting detail Riley’s struggle to fend off her attacker, noting that she managed to call 911 before her phone was snatched away. She dug her fingernails into her killer’s arms and neck, effectively marking him, they said. He dragged her off the trail and tried to pull off her clothes. Then, he smashed her head repeatedly with a rock.

“The evidence will show that Laken fought,” Sheila Ross, the special prosecutor leading the case, said in her opening statements. “She fought for her life. She fought for her dignity.”

Ross was making the case not to a jury, but to Judge H. Patrick Haggard of state Superior Court. That is because Ibarra’s lawyers on Tuesday requested a bench trial, the day before jury selection was scheduled to begin. In such trials, the judge alone determines whether the defendant is guilty. Prosecutors are seeking a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lawyers for Ibarra argued that as graphic and chilling as the evidence was, it failed to conclusively connect Ibarra to the scene. “The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed anyone is circumstantial,” said Dustin Kirby, one of the defense lawyers.

Ibarra was arrested Feb. 23, the day after the attack, and has remained in custody without bail since then. He has pleaded not guilty to numerous charges, including malice murder and aggravated assault.

Before requesting the bench trial, his lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to move the case out of Athens and to keep certain evidence from being presented to jurors.

In his opening statements Friday, Kirby lamented that elected officials and others had politicized the case. “People have used this case for their personal gain,” Kirby said. “Financial gain, political gain.”

The case became a rallying cry for President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans who made immigration and border security central to the 2024 campaign.