The murder of a 22-year-old University of Virginia student should bring her former boyfriend 26 years in prison, a jury concluded Wednesday, finding no merit in separate charges that carried up to three life sentences for George W. Huguely V.
Huguely, 24, rose to his feet and made the sign of the cross as the jury entered the cavernous Charlottesville circuit courtroom. His head bowed and his shoulders slumped at the panel's convictions for second-degree murder and grand larceny after a two-week trial.
About three hours later, Huguely affected the same upright pose with head bowed when the jury recommended he serve 25 years for murder and an additional year for grand larceny.
Huguely will be sentenced sometime after April 16 when lawyers meet with Charlottesville Circuit Judge Edward L. Hogshire about the case.
During the sentencing phase, Commonwealth's Attorney David Chapman put on two witnesses, Love's mother, Sharon Love, and Love's older sister, Lexie Love.
Sharon Love, widowed before her daughter's death, battled back tears and described the daily fight to stay positive after the loss of her daughter.
"Every year that goes by I'd like to know what she'd be doing now," she said. "I'm like, I'm afraid I'm forgetting little pieces about her."
Lexie Love, a constant presence in the courtroom during the trial and whose likeness to her sister is a reminder of Huguely's victim, said the death has damaged her father's last wish.
"Before Dad died, he said to keep the family together. That was always a top priority," said Love, who is engaged. "I'm not as happy as I thought I would be. There's something missing. There's a big hole that will always be there."
Chapman did not ask the jury to impose a specific sentence but reminded them that Huguely, even in prison, would be able to chart the daily goings-on in the world, an opportunity he had denied Love.
The overwhelming sentiment left in the courtroom Wednesday night was one of sorrow, and it was captured most movingly by Lexie Love.
"At first, I kind of was in shock," she told the jury. "Then it became reality. Some days are better than other days. I've never wanted anything so badly in my life than to see her face again."
But defense lawyer Rhonda Quagliana stressed to the jury that sentencing should not be retribution and that no matter what the jury decided, the sentence would not bring back Love to her family. She called a sorrowful letter of Huguely's to Love about the grip of alcohol on him - that it was "ruining my life" - Huguely's first step toward redemption.
It also preceded by months Huguely's violent attack on Love and his decision to leave her without help, bleeding and near-unconscious in her apartment.
But she also drummed home the video of Huguely's interrogation to police, one in which he seemed genuinely distraught and, until a detective told him, unaware that Love had died.
"She's not dead. She's not dead. Please tell me she's not dead," Quagliana told the jury, repeating Huguely's anguished cries.
Love was found dead on her bed in her apartment May 3, 2010. Chapman argued that Huguely had broken through the lacrosse athlete's apartment door shortly before midnight May 2, beat Love nearly to death, and left her alone and dying.
He stole her laptop, tossing it in a trash bin as he made his way back to his apartment a short distance away and lying to his roommates there about where he had been.
He was arrested about 7:30 that morning after a grueling interrogation by Charlottesville police in which he gradually revealed how he had broken in, pushed and wrestled with Love, but had left her alive.
Love's family issued a statement after the verdicts and sentence recommendation, describing the loss of the Cockeysville, Md., student, daughter and sister as painful and everlasting.
"We will continue to keep her spirit alive by performing works of kindness in her name," the statement read. "Our hearts burst with pride when we think of Yeardley's accomplishments, but our hearts melt when we remember her kindness and grace."
U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan issued a statement Wednesday evening, saying, "As professor Anne Coughlin reminded us on Feb. 2, the conclusion of a trial like this may bring a momentary sense of justice or retribution, but our judicial system can never restore to a family what it has lost. Yeardley's family, teammates, sorority sisters and friends - indeed all of us at the University - continue to feel the loss of this promising young woman. It remains now to each of us to commit to caring for one another and, when we see someone in trouble, to having the courage to intercede and offer assistance.
"Our sympathy and compassion go to the Love family, as well as to the Huguely family, as they face the future and their personal grief," Sullivan said.
In assessing the verdict, a longtime Charlottesville attorney said the jury didn't agree that Huguely intended to kill Love.
"The jury's verdict means that they didn't buy the argument that Huguely killed Love with premeditation and they didn't buy that the murder occurred in the course of a robbery," said Scott Goodman.
Goodman said that the defense's characterization of Huguely's theft of Love's laptop as an afterthought blocked convictions of felony murder, two charges of burglary and a fourth of robbery. All four charges hinged on the legal notion that Huguely's actions, from breaking through the door to his exit, had been a single concerted act. Instead, the jury settled on second-degree murder, a murder committed without premeditation but with malice and murderous intent.
Huguely told police that he had merely wanted to talk with Love, who had spurned him and become increasingly distant over allegations of infidelity.
Chapman described Huguely as a man whose drinking transformed him into a violent man and at sentencing recalled alcohol-related convictions of Huguely's in Lexington in 2009. In that case, a stun gun was used on Huguely by a Lexington police officer, although Chapman didn't bring up that element of the case.
Huguely had told Love in a letter that he feared the power of alcohol over him. But he later emailed Love, furious that she had been with someone else after she had said they would renew their friendship if he sobered up. The night before Huguely attacked Love, they had been pictured together, holding hands, with Huguely's family.
The next day though, Huguely consumed nearly a dozen beers, beginning in the early-morning hours May 2, continuing on a golf outing with his father, and on into the night until he kicked his way through Love's apartment door minutes before midnight. The door, bearing a volleyball-size hole, remained throughout the trial.
Huguely was an all-America lacrosse player at a Bethesda, Md., prep school, where he was also quarterback on the football team and regarded as an unflappable, prankster-loving student. But his drinking at U.Va. worried friends, who testified that Huguely was drinking to drunkenness four to five times a week. They had planned an intervention the weekend Love died.
Jurors clearly found that Huguely killed Love and not accidentally or merely in a rage, concluding that the killing was deliberate and malicious.
Medical testimony had differed about the cause of Yeardley's death, with defense witnesses saying she suffocated and the prosecution arguing that she had died because of blunt-force trauma that only could have been inflicted by Huguely. Jurors could have concluded, though, the Love suffocated only after Huguely had so badly beaten her that she was unresponsive.
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