Huguely's Defense Appeals Murder Conviction

Chevy Chase native George Huguely V, convicted in the beating death of his ex-girlfriend Yeardley Love, on Tuesday appealed his second-degree murder conviction to the Virginia Court of Appeals.

Both Huguely and Love, of Cockeysville, played lacrosse at the University of Virginia.

Huguely, 25, was convicted in February 2012 after a Charlottesville jury found he beat Love to death in her off-campus apartment.

Huguely was sentenced in August to 23 years in prison, Patch reported.

After the sentencing, Huguely's defense requested a new trial for Huguely, citing a series of errors on the part of the prosecution, Patch reported.

In this week's appeal—which was filed by Paul D. Clement, a former solicitor general of the United States and one of the country's top litigators—Huguely's defense team requested a new trial and renewed "some objections that a lower court rejected last year when it upheld a jury’s verdict that found Huguely guilty" of Love's death, The Washington Post reported.

The appeal argued that Huguely was "deprived of a fair jury," that the trial "should not have continued when a member of Huguely's two-lawyer defense team briefly fell ill and could not appear in court during some testimony" and that "the defense team should have been told that Love’s family planned to file a civil lawsuit against Huguely," The Post wrote. 

Read more about the appeal on The Post's website.