CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely V was found guilty of second-degree murder in the May 2010 slaying of his former girlfriend.
Huguely was convicted Wednesday evening in the killing of 22-year-old Yeardley Love, who was found beaten in her apartment in the early-morning hours of May 3, 2010.
The jury of seven men and five women reached its verdict after about nine hours of deliberation following two weeks of testimony in Charlottesville Circuit Court.
Huguely, a graduate of the Landon School in Bethesda, appeared anxious when he entered the courtroom, scanning the room for his family. He showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read. There were no outbursts in the courtroom from relatives of either Love or Huguely.
In convicting Huguely of second-degree murder, the jury found that the killing was malicious, but not premeditated.
The jury was considering a range of charges, from first-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter. Huguely was also convicted of grand larceny for taking Love’s laptop; he was found not guilty of felony murder, robbery, burglary, and breaking into a home with the intent to commit a felony.
Sentencing proceedings began immediately after the verdict was announced.
Love’s mother, Sharon Love, wept on the stand.
“I would like to know what she would be doing now,” she told the jury. “Every year that goes by, I’m afraid that I’m forgetting little pieces about her.”
The 24-year-old from Chevy Chase faces five to 40 years in prison.
Huguely had maintained that he only wanted to talk to Love, of Cockeysville, Md. when he went to her apartment late in the evening on May 2, 2010. He told police during questioning that the two fought, but he didn’t do anything to Love — who, like Huguely, was a U.Va. senior and lacrosse player — that would have killed her.
In his closing statement, defense attorney Francis McQ. Lawrence said Huguely had “some responsibility” for Love’s death, but the killing was “not calculated.”
But medical experts testified for the prosecution that Love’s brain injuries could only come from trauma, and she died of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Prosecutor Dave Chapman told jurors that Huguely broke Love’s door to get into her apartment, beat her, then left her for dead.
“Who wouldn’t crawl to get help if they could?” Chapman asked in his closing argument. “You don’t have to be able to move to scream, you just have to be conscious.”
Medical experts who testified for the defense countered that Love’s injuries weren’t consistent with trauma and she likely died by suffocating in her blood-soaked pillow.
Testimony during the trial centered on those medical issues and on the pair’s volatile relationship.
In the months before the killing, Huguely had choked Love and sent her an email that said “I should have killed you” in part because he was upset that she had “hooked up” with someone else, according to testimony from the couple’s friends. And Love had barged into Huguely’s apartment and whacked him with her purse because she was angry he had been with other women.
