UPDATE: Huguely Indicted in Murder of Yeardley Love

UPDATED (4:30 p.m.)—A grand jury in Charlottesville, VA, has indicted George Huguely V in the May 2010 murder of Yeardley Love, according to The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress and several TV stations.

A trial is set to begin Feb. 6  in Charlottesville Circuit Court. The trial is scheduled to last until Feb. 17, The Daily Progress reported on its website. Commonwealth Attorney Warner D. "Dave" Chapman told the court that the case could be tried in less than two weeks.

The grand jury in Charlottesville Circuit Court decided Monday to indict Huguely, of Chevy Chase, on charges of assault, robbery, burglary and felony murder in connection with the death of former girlfriend Love, of Cockeysville, and the theft of her computer.

The University of Virginia "lacrosse murder case" drew national attention last spring and attracted a large media turnout at last week’s preliminary hearing, which lasted nearly nine hours at the Charlottesville Circuit Court.

The Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia’s newspaper, suggested that Huguely’s defense attorneys will continue to argue that Love’s death was an accident and that Huguely was highly intoxicated on the night last May when he battered down the door of Love’s bedroom and “shook” her.

The paper quoted David Heilberg, a defense attorney in Charlottesville who is not involved with the case, asserting that intoxication doesn’t make a killing unintentional. 

“What it does is it can negate the element of premeditation,” the paper quoted Heilberg as saying. “Intoxication is not a defense for any crime in Virginia except first-degree murder,” he said.

Teammates of Huguely testified that on the day before Love’s body was found, Huguely appeared to be drunk by early evening, following a father-son golf tournament for the men’s lacrosse team.

At last Monday’s hearing, Huguely’s relatives and friends sat across from Love’s family and friends.

At one point, Caitey Whiteley, in a near-monotone voice, “described seeing the door to Love’s bedroom with a hole in it and her longtime friend laying facedown on her bed,” Don Markus wrote in The Baltimore Sun. Love’s mother left the courtroom at that point in the testimony and didn’t return for “a while,” Markus added. 

Whiteley had known Love since they played together on a club team in Baltimore before college.

Whiteley testified about Love and Huguely's "on and off" relationship that began when they were freshmen, according to the Sun account.

Whiteley said Love had become angry after hearing that Huguely had been seeing other women. 

“She was obviously confused about how other people knew about it but she didn’t,” Whiteley said.