Every bit of evidence collected, and everything still being sought, seemed directed at helping authorities understand Huguely’s state of mind when he made that fatal visit to Yeardley’s apartment. Had he threatened her beforehand? Did he say he meant to hurt her? Was there any hint she might be in peril?
With the first public denial by Huguely’s lawyer, it was clear that at least one prong of the defense would be that George never meant to hurt Yeardley, that he went over to talk and things got out of hand (an accident, as Lawrence had described it). As more search warrants became public, it seemed clear that police were looking for evidence to obliterate that defense or create a new one altogether.
The search for evidence of intent came as no surprise to Gregory Mitchell, a self-described “evidence guy” and professor at the University of Virginia’s law school, who found himself questioned by reporters about the case even though he had no direct involvement in it.
“The dispute here is about state of mind, how much harm he inflicted on her at the time, and whether it was foreseeable that this”—her death—“was the kind of result that would happen,” Mitchell said. “Everything I saw about the case through the media indicated the prosecution was trying to make the case that this was an intentional killing, that he could have stopped but he didn’t.”
In movies and on television shows, much is made about motive: Why did the killer do it? In real life, prosecutors don’t have to establish motive. It’s not their job to get inside the heads of the accused and figure out why they do the things they do. They just have to prove that they did it. Sure, painting the “why” picture is helpful, and it often can sway a jury to convict when evidence is otherwise so-so—even if lawyers and the jurors themselves don’t admit it. But establishing motive is not legally necessary.
In Yeardley’s case, according to her friends, the motive could have been that George Huguely was the jealous type, and far too controlling to let the relationship end. But even having the motive question out of the way wouldn’t keep prosecutors from having to climb inside his head to anticipate the defense they would likely face at trial.
The questions they had to answer: What was his intent? Did he mean to kill her? Could he have stopped?
The Hook, a weekly newsmagazine, ran a story titled “Playing defense: Legal eagles prognosticate on Huguely strategy.” Fifty-cent headline aside, the piece drew comparisons between Huguely’s case and that of another UVA student who had been charged with murder, Andrew Alston.
Alston was a twenty-one-year-old third-year student in 2003 when he headed out for drinks with some friends and his older brother, who was in town visiting. During a night of bar hopping and booze, his path intersected with twenty-two-year-old Walker Sisk, a volunteer firefighter, near the Corner—the same area Yeardley and George lived near and where they regularly bar hopped. What happened next became hotly debated during trial a year later: Alston, who regularly carried a pocket knife, testified that Sisk grabbed the knife and lunged, and in the struggle, Alston wrestled back the weapon and stabbed Sisk twenty times in self-defense. He claimed he learned his knife-redirecting skills in an eight-week martial arts course he had taken. Police arriving at the scene followed a trail of blood to, ironically, 222 14th Street Northwest, Yeardley’s apartment complex, where they arrested Alston. He stood trial on a second-degree murder charge in November 2004.
Sisk’s family balked at Alston’s explanation of the fight, and the only possible defense wound Alston suffered was a cut that the testifying medical examiner said could have come from his hand slipping on the blood-slicked knife. Still, the jury weighed both his testimony and the evidence of substantial drinking—Sisk’s blood-alcohol content was at least .19% when he died, more than twice the amount needed to be considered legally intoxicated—and came back with a surprising verdict: voluntary manslaughter. Their agreed-upon sentence: three years in prison.
“I looked at all the evidence, and didn’t think it was malice—just tragic on both sides,” one juror told The Hook.
Alston, dubbed the Corner Killer by some media, was released from prison in 2006 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, as is typical if the prisoner has behaved behind bars. Sisk’s family filed a wrongful death suit against Alston upon his release and was awarded $600,000—of which Alston paid just $3,600 after filing for bankruptcy.
The Hook, which had run a series of prosecution-favored stories during and after the trial, pointed to Alston’s light conviction when presenting the “legal eagles” story forecasting Huguely’s likely defense.
“So what can a shocked community expect when Huguely eventually comes to trial?” the paper asked, then turned to area defense lawyers for some predictions. The consensus: that Francis Lawrence, Huguely’s attorney, was well respected and highly skilled and wouldn’t have stated that Yeardley’s death was a tragic accident unless he felt certain of it.
“I won’t second guess him,” said defense lawyer John Zwerling, who had represented Alston seven years earlier. “I would think he has information that the intent of the client was not to kill her, and that it was accidental.”
Perhaps Huguely meant to slap, punch, or shake, but that doesn’t mean he meant to kill, Zwerling continued.
Unlike Alston, Huguely wasn’t charged with second-degree murder. He faced first-degree murder. And that hinged on him having intended to kill his victim, or at least having had ample opportunity to slow down and halt his actions. Second-degree murder is more a crime of passion—not unintentional enough to be an accident (and downgraded even further to perhaps a manslaughter charge), but, typically, quick and rage-fueled. Perhaps the killer walked in on her husband with another woman, and she snapped. That scenario is more likely to fall into the second-degree category, while the woman who leaves her apartment, buys a gun, and returns the next day to kill her husband is far more likely to be charged with first-degree murder in most U.S. states.
Of course, there are many gray areas, and outcomes vary not only state by state, but jury by jury and judge by judge. One jury might rule that a strangulation, which takes on average at least three and a half minutes to complete, is a snap, impulsive action, and perhaps that jury would only convict a suspect of second-degree murder. A jury in the same courthouse might determine that those final minutes dripped like molasses, giving the assailant plenty of time to stop himself and reassess whether his anger warranted taking another human life. That jury, perhaps, would convict him of first-degree murder. Same circumstances, same courthouse, but different verdicts.
In Virginia, there’s the added complexity of capital murder—or a murder that qualifies for death-penalty consideration. The Commonwealth of Virginia, in fact, has a storied history with hangings, electric chairs, and lethal injection. The colonies’ first formal execution occurred in 1608, when Captain George Kendall, living in Virginia’s Jamestown colony, was hanged for spying for the Spanish government. According to Espy, a database that tracks executions, Virginia to date outranks relative U.S. newcomer Texas as having executed the most people since 1608 (though its numbers have dropped significantly since 1976, after the federal government lifted a four-year ban on state executions).
Not every murder qualifies for capital consideration. Second-degree murder is out entirely, and only certain premeditated murders qualify. For example, a premeditated murder committed while in the commission of an abduction, a robbery, a rape, or an attempted rape would qualify. So would the premeditated murder of someone under age fourteen by a person over the age of twenty-one, and the premeditated murder of more than one person within a three-year span of time. Also, premeditated murder of certain types of people could land a culprit on death row—such as a pregnant woman, a law-enforcement officer, a judge, a juror, or a witness.
Whether Huguely qualified was debated not by prosecutors and the defense, but by the media. On Good Morning America, Robin Sax, a former Los Angeles County district attorney, pointed to Huguely’s theft of his ex-girlfriend’s computer as a possible nail in his capital-punishment coffin.
“This is Law School 101,” Sax said. “This is a felony murder that happened in the course of a burglary.”
Mark Geragos, a defense attorney also not connected with the case, said he doubted prosecutors would seek death.
“This is not the type of case that generally prosecutors will seek the death penalty in,” he told Good Morning America. “He’s going to argue, ‘Well, I had no intent to kill and I didn’t have malice. I never wanted to kill her. I loved her.’”
If District Attorney Chapman was weighing the death penalty, he wasn’t saying so publicly. But his actions in court at least indicated that he had no plan to heed the defense’s claim that Yeardley’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident. That proclamation by Francis Lawrence, which came while he addressed reporters after his client’s arraignment the day after Yeardley’s death, seemed to lay the foundation for Huguely’s defense.
In short, it’s the “I didn’t mean to” argument.
Lawyers weren’t the only ones struggling to get inside George Huguely’s head. The case sparked interest among domestic abuse experts nationwide, some of whom used it and its notoriety to highlight the dangers of dating violence.
On paper, Huguely was the antithesis of the stereo typical abuser. He was charming, educated, talented, and wealthy. And Yeardley seemed one of the unlikeliest victims imaginable. She was smart, strong, ambitious, and, by all accounts, emotionally well adjusted. On top of that, she had no reason to stay—she wasn’t bound by marriage vows or forever tied to Huguely through children.
But while the case left many perplexed, Huguely appeared to some to fit a mold: that of a man with narcissistic personality disorder. On talk and television programs, as well as on mental health blogs, domestic violence experts and psychiatrists posited that Huguely’s behavior could be attributed to the disorder. The condition is hotly debated among psychiatrists, and its future as an official personality disorder is gray: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, has targeted NPD as one of several personality disorders to be axed when its fifth edition is released in 2013—not because people don’t have it, but because some scientists are looking to revamp the labels psychiatrists and psychologists use. (One Harvard psychologist described the potential elimination as “draconian” and “unenlightened” to a New York Times reporter.)
Narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis, one that can’t be made by reading police and court documents alone. Named for Narcissus, the handsome hunter in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, narcissists are preoccupied with their own self-importance. They believe that they’re special and should associate only with other special people, and they harbor disdain for people they feel are inferior. They have a sense of entitlement and expect nothing short of adulation and admiration from others. They exploit other people to further themselves, their arrogance is undeniable, and their fragile egos make them quick to become jealous of others.
When breaking down the red flags reported in the wake of Huguely’s arrest, the definition could fit, some experts said.
He lashed out at a police officer, threatening to kill her.
He beat a fellow teammate for walking Yeardley home and supposedly trying to kiss her.
In a fit of self-indulgent rage, he jumped into the ocean to swim to shore because his father refused his request to turn the family’s yacht around.
He attacked Yeardley at least once in public, choking her until he was pulled off by fellow lacrosse players.
And even his high school behavior, as reported by the Washington Post in 2006, pointed to potentially unhealthy self-aggrandizement that at the time was laughed off as Huguely being a jokester: He stole his coach’s car keys, then drove the vehicle to the coach to show off behind the wheel. He bet another coach he’d make a play in exchange for a kiss from the coach’s girlfriend. When he indeed made the play, he went a step further, asking for the woman’s phone number.
But Levy said there’s a difference between being narcissistic and having a diagnosable disorder.
“Certainly someone who is so wrapped up in himself that he could hurt someone he loves is only focusing on himself,” Levy said. “He’s not seeing the consequences of his own behavior, and he’s not empathizing with how she might feel. But that’s during the abuse. He may go back and forth. He may be attentive at other times.
“You do see narcissism often in people who are abusive,” she continued. “But whether they all fit a clear diagnosis for narcissistic personality disorder, that’s a stretch.”
Even if Huguely had NPD, a jury likely would never be told. Occasionally defense lawyers try to use the diagnosis to trim time off a client’s sentence post-conviction, but NPD is not grounds for an insanity defense. For the insanity claim to stick, the culprit must be unable to tell the difference between what society deems is right and wrong. Narcissists know the rules; they simply don’t want to abide by them.
And if Huguely’s drinking was nearly as heavy as his neighbors told police and reporters, it could have made it tough for Yeardley to see his eruptions as something more sinister than booze-fueled outbursts.
Domestic violence studies have shown that women are more easily able to blame drugs or alcohol for their partner’s moody behavior. According to statistics compiled by the Marin Institute, a self-described “alcohol industry watch-dog,” two-thirds of victims of intimate partner violence reported that alcohol was involved in the incident, and women whose partners abused alcohol were more than three times as likely than other women to be assaulted by their partners. In 2002, more than 70,000 students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four were victims of alcohol-related sexual assault in the United States, according to a study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol. In Huguely’s case, most of his legal run-ins reportedly came during booze fests. Friends and relatives seemed to have trouble understanding how a young man who appeared so likeable and charismatic one minute could be accused of such outrageous behavior the next. Some apparently blamed the alcohol and reportedly asked him to curb his drinking.
But according to some substance abuse experts, that would have been a naïve—if well-intentioned—request. Levy has for years dealt with the misconception that alcohol is the sole cause of violent behavior.
“With men who batter and also drink, they were violent before the drinking and they’re violent after the drinking,” Levy said. “It’s just an excuse.”
Rather, alcohol abuse is considered a complication of narcissistic personality disorder, according to the Mayo Clinic. The disorder is rare, affecting more men than women, and its cause is unknown. According to the clinic, some evidence links the disorder to excessive pampering and extremely high expectations in childhood. Other evidence indicates it’s prewired in the brain.
For a young man like Huguely, whose upbringing was posh and whose athletic prowess was routinely praised, it might have been difficult for those around him to recognize his behavior as possibly indicative of a personality disorder. After all, he wasn’t the only lacrosse player known to occasionally act superior or cocky. It was only in hindsight that people seemed to string together the series of outbursts and wonder if they should have recognized Huguely as a lit powder keg.
By friends’ accounts, Yeardley was growing tired of it all. It’s not clear if Huguely had physically abused her before he choked her in public—she can’t speak out, and he so far has refused interview requests—but research indicates that it’s unlikely for someone to escalate from zero to murder in just a few weeks. Perhaps there were put-downs or verbal threats. Maybe he had grabbed an arm or pushed her. It might be that he showed some signs of troubling behavior that Yeardley initially dismissed as being out of character or forgivable.
What ever happened, one thing seems clear: Yeardley couldn’t have known that the young man she had let into her heart and introduced to her family would one day be arrested in her violent death. Had she any clue, she certainly would have summoned the strength to ask for help.
Yeardley was nothing if not strong.