More than two years after Yeardley Love died and nearly three months after her ex-boyfriend, George Huguely V, was convicted of her murder, the public will get a limited look at evidence jurors weighed in the case of the University of Virginia lacrosse players.
Anyone who can make it to Charlottesville on Tuesday or Wednesday can sit in Circuit Court as some of the exhibits in the case are open to view and to note-taking — but not to copying or rebroadcast.
More crime and safety news
Maria N. Werts, 49, was driving under the influence when her car left the road and killed a woman.
A man was critically injured Tuesday in Montgomery County by a school bus; no children were aboard
Stan Barry (D), first elected to the post in 1999, said he will retire in the summer.
Huguely’s videotaped police statement and heated, profane text messages the pair exchanged over infidelities are among the evidence set to be aired in two repeat sessions. Medical records and any photos showing Love’s body will not be shown, but a complete list of what will and will not be available has not been released by the court.
Huguely, 24, of Chevy Chase, was convicted of second-degree murder in the May 2010 death of Love, 22, of Cockeysville, a few weeks before their graduation. She died of blunt force trauma to the head, a state medical examiner ruled.
Jurors sentenced Huguely to 26 years for murder and a grand larceny charge for stealing Love’s laptop — an act, he told police, meant as “collateral” to compel her to contact him. In August, Huguely is scheduled to come before a judge who can accept or lower the jury’s terms. He remains in the regional jail in Charlottesville where he has been held since his arrest.
During the February trial, only jurors were able to watch Huguely’s police interview, recorded within hours after a roommate found Love’s body on May 3, 2010, facedown on her bloody bedroom pillow in their off-campus apartment.
The tape played on a monitor turned away from spectators.
What sounded in the hushed courtroom was chilling: Huguely, hours after Love was found dead, telling detectives he had been drinking all day before going to see Love shortly before midnight on May 2, 2010. He wanted “just to talk” about their recent arguments, he said. Love yelled at him to go away, he said, but he ignored her and kicked through her locked bedroom door.
Inside, he “wrestled” to the floor with her, and “shook her a little” but “never struck her. I never hit her in the face or anything.” Love banged her own head against a wall as she pleaded with him to leave, he said.
Before he left, she was bleeding from her nose, Huguely said, and he pushed her back on her bed. “She was flopping, like a fish out of water,” but she was alive, he told detectives.
Huguely wailed when detectives finally told him Love was dead.
But with only the audio available to most of the courtroom, questions linger:
Was Huguely demonstrating how Love cowered when he said “like this” as he told a detective how Love backed into a corner of the bed?
How did his face look when he initially said he “knocked” to get into her bedroom? What was his expression when he later said, “It might have been locked. ... I think I put a hole in the door ... pretty sure.”
Was that thumping the rhythm of Huguely’s hand hitting a table as he sobbed that Love could not possibly be dead?
The Post Most: LocalMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Loading...
Comments