<p>Defense has no shame.</p>
<p>Adderall</a> defense: Huguely’s lawyers dispute cause of death | The Hook News Blog</p>
<p>For the sake of their families, friends, the UVa community, and Charlottesville, I hope people will take this opportunity to simply read the newspiece barrons has posted if they wish and leave the speculation to a minimum. No, I am not the thought police, the forum-master, or anything else. Some previous threads became harsh and not necessarily productive. That’s my two cents.</p>
<p>It is not a question of “shame.” It is a question of whether the defense lawyers will be able to find a reason for the jury to sentence him to life in prison, rather than death. When one assaults another person, he takes the victim as he finds her. The defense can claim that she would not have died, but for _______. Too bad, she was taking medication when you assaulted her. She died. You are guilty of murder. The only issue is death or life in prison. He did what he did in Virginia – they are not afraid to take the needle out of the drawer in the Old Dominion.</p>
<p>What is that expression…“Getting away with murder” …</p>
<p>*When one assaults another person, he takes the victim as he finds her. The defense can claim that she would not have died, but for _______. Too bad, she was taking medication when you assaulted her. She died. You are guilty of murder. *</p>
<p>Very true… </p>
<p>the defense is going to grasp at any straw they can…it won’t matter…he’ll be found guilty.</p>
<p>He probably won’t get the death penalty…for a several reasons.</p>
<p>This was one of the reasons I left the field of Victim Advocacy. To sit in court with a victim and here the vile garbage that came out of the Defense lawyers mouth made me sick. </p>
<p>Yes, I know we all have a right to an attorney. But no one is forced to try and make a rape victim look like she was “asking for it.” Or ask for medical records for no other reason than to to try and explain away the death of a young woman.</p>
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<p>I’ve been unpleasantly surprised more than once and I’m not counting on a guilty verdict here either. You’d be amazed what people will come to believe when the Defense gets to smear the victim for as long as they want and the victim has virtually no voice.</p>
<p>I always thought the courts/lawyers should be about “truth” finding and not just trying to create some minor doubt by presenting hypotheticals. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>* You’d be amazed what people will come to believe when the Defense gets to smear the victim for as long as they want and the victim has virtually no voice. *</p>
<p>I agree that this happens when the person is a rather unknown. Yeardley Love is like a minor beloved celebrity in that region - it’s hard for the defense to smear someone who was widely known to be a sweet kid. It’s more likely that the defendent is going to be the “hated character” in this trial.</p>
<p>According to an article in the Washington Examiner - a plea deal is in the works:</p>
<p>"Prosecutors have no plans to seek the death penalty for George Huguely V, the 23-year-old University of Virginia lacrosse player charged with brutally slaying his former girlfriend, police say.</p>
<p>And there is a growing consensus that the case will be settled in a plea deal before trial, said persons close to both the prosecution and the Huguely family.</p>
<p>Huguely, of Chevy Chase, has been locked in a Charlottesville jail cell for seven months awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges for the beating death of 22-year-old Yeardley Love, a fellow classmate and lacrosse player. He will face prosecutors on Jan. 21 for the first time since his May bond hearing."</p>
<p>Read more at the Washington Examiner: [No</a> death penalty for Huguely, cops say | Washington Examiner](<a href=“http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2010/12/no-death-penalty-huguely-cops-say#ixzz18JVrpsqR]No”>http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2010/12/no-death-penalty-huguely-cops-say#ixzz18JVrpsqR)</p>
<p>“I always thought the courts/lawyers should be about “truth” finding and not just trying to create some minor doubt by presenting hypotheticals”</p>
<p>Courts are about truth finding. Lawyers serve the truth by marshalling the strongest possible arguments on behalf of each side, which gives the judge/jury the best chance of finding the truth. Crummy arguments – like this Adderall argument – will have their day in the sun, and generally they’ll be given the weight they deserve and tossed out of court.</p>
<p>If by “minor doubt” you mean “reasonable doubt,” you bet it’s the defense’s job to find it in any way they can. Introducing hypotheticals (there was another assailant and the police grabbed the wrong guy; the victim died of natural causes; whatever) is one way to do that. Most of the time they fail, but where good lawyers gave it a shot, we can be a lot more confident that the guilty verdict was correct. I am certain I would not want to live in a country where that was not the case.</p>
<p>There’s no way in hell this guy walks. The worst-case scenario IMHO is that they let him cop to 2d degree murder or manslaughter (which might be accurate anyway; who knows if he killed her in a passion) and he gets too few years in jail. Jurors would look at that beautiful blue-eyed smile in Yeardley’s portrait, see their daughters and sisters, and go for vengeance. If his lawyers have any brains, he’ll plead out.</p>
<p>*There’s no way in hell this guy walks. The worst-case scenario IMHO is that they let him cop to 2d degree murder or manslaughter (which might be accurate anyway; who knows if he killed her in a passion) and he gets too few years in jail. Jurors would look at that beautiful blue-eyed smile in Yeardley’s portrait, see their daughters and sisters, and go for vengeance. If his lawyers have any brains, he’ll plead out. *</p>
<p>Exactly!!!</p>
<p>And if the defense tries to smear her, the jury is going to hate the defense team as much as they’ll hate their client.</p>
<p>No defense team is going to want this to go to trial… they know that their client is going to get painted as an over-sized bully who wouldn’t let an ex-girlfriend break up with him. That type of defendent is hated by all. </p>
<p>the defense is just trying to show the prosecution that they will have some defense to put up if this goes to trial. This is just a strategy to encourage the prosecution to agree to a plea deal to save time/money. </p>
<p>I wonder what the plea deal will be? My gut is saying that the defense wants voluntary manslaughter and maybe 5-10 years. Thoughts??</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I think it’s entirely possible that the point of this investigation is not to “smear” the victim, or to help the killer “get off”. A big issue in any murder prosecution is whether the killer intended to kill the victim. You can be convicted of murder without intent to kill under some circumstances (which may not be present here), and you can probably be sentenced to death even if you didn’t have intent (and, again, not necessarily under these circumstances), but there’s a good chance that proving lack of intent would negate first degree murder and the death penalty here, and maybe even reduce the conviction to manslaughter (still a serious felony with real prison time possible).</p>
<p>I think all of us, even those (like me) who think the defendant is scum, are prepared to consider the possibility that he didn’t mean to kill his ex-girlfriend. Part of what would establish that – in addition to evidence of how much he loved her, and how drunk he was that night so he wasn’t in control of himself and couldn’t form intent to kill, etc. – would be to show that what he did might not have killed most people, but it killed this woman because she was specially at risk in a way the killer didn’t understand.</p>
<p>That wouldn’t mean that he could avoid responsibility for his actions. It might mean, however, that he could not be found guilty of capital murder, and would have to be convicted of a lesser offense. And that’s awfully important, especially when half the world would like to see him drawn, quartered, and flayed this afternoon, and most of the other half is willing to wait until tomorrow to do it. That’s what a defense lawyer is supposed to evaluate – is OBLIGATED to evaluate. It would be malpractice and a denial of the defendant’s constitutional right to counsel if he didn’t thoroughly investigate and consider that line of defense.</p>
<p>That’s not sleazy, at least not to my mind. And it IS part of truth finding.</p>
<p>I don’t think the death penalty has ever been on the table in this case. I’m assuming the defense team is trying to unearth? create? evidence that would “downgrade” the degree of murder from first to second or third and thus make a lesser penalty appropriate. I doubt the case will go to a jury–seems much riskier for Hughley than a plea-bargain-- but we’ll see.</p>
<p>“That type of defendent is hated by all.”</p>
<p>And this type of victim is loved by all. If she’d been a 50-year-old crack-addicted black prostitute killed by her bullying ex-bf in the alley where she slept, the odds at trial would be different. A beautiful young white college girl killed in her own bed…from the prosecution’s point of view, that’s the kind of victim that makes their job a lot easier.</p>
<p>Just as they put $$$ values on lives every day based on earning potential etc, for legal purposes, I have no real problem caring more about the victim who has lived a positive rather than destructive life. Some lives are worth more than others. Sometimes early death is part of the lifestyle.
Are there any legal systems around the world that place more emphasis on finding the truth than the adversarial approach?</p>
<p>That’s the wrong question, barrons. All of them place emphasis on finding the truth. The question is how they allocate the risk of error. Our system has myriad features to constrain personal vendetta and prejudice, and to demand a high degree of certainty before someone is punished by the state. Most systems don’t care so much about those things.</p>
<p>^^^^ This.</p>
<p>There are non-adversarial, investigative justice systems, where the judge is also in charge of examining the facts. That works pretty well where the judge is zealous, unbiased, has lots of resources, etc. and where there isn’t a lot of institutional prejudice against some segments of society. But what the adversarial system does better than any other (when there are good lawyers on both sides, which is too often not the case) is make sure that no stone is left unturned. An investigating judge, even an excellent one, who turns over 9 stones and finds evidence in favor of party A may not bother with the 10th stone that hides proof party B should win. But someone whose overriding duty is to find evidence that helps party B is always going to turn over that 10th stone.</p>
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It didn’t help Bonnie Garland. [Bonnie</a> Garland murder case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Garland_murder_case]Bonnie”>Bonnie Garland murder case - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I don’t believe our system tries to find the truth. For one the defense can say anything it wants even if it knows it contradicts the facts without penalty. Does a defense attorney ever say to the client–tell me what really happened. I think the defense should be as concerned with finding truth as mounting a defense and often obfuscating truth.</p>
<p>Bonnie Garland was, sadlly, an exception to the rule. It’s been demonstrated time and again that non-white victims of crime, no matter how virtuous they lives they led, frequently don’t get the same justice as a person with a socio-economic standing similar to that of the unfortunate Yardley Love unless someone brings the matter to bear.</p>