CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The defense team of George Huguely V asked the judge in his first-degree murder trial to strike the most serious charges against him Wednesday, but Judge Edward L. Hogshire overruled the motion.  Attorney Francis McQ. Lawrence argued Huguely took the computer of Yeardley Love as "at most an afterthought" so that charges related to burglary, including murder in commission of a felony, should be dropped. He also argued the charge of first-degree, or premeditated, murder should be stricken because Huguely went to see Love that night to "make up and work things out," not to kill her.  Prosecutor Warren D. Chapman argued that these are questions for the jury to decide. Chapman rested his case Wednesday. Lawrence's motion marked the beginning of the defense's case.  Earlier, one of Huguely's former teammates on the University of Virginia men's lacrosse team testified that when Huguely returned to his apartment after midnight May 3, 2010, his demeanor had changed from inebriated belligerence to sullen silence.  Ken Clausen said Huguely had a blank expression. "George, what's wrong with you?" Clausen said he asked three times. Huguely just stared at the TV, Clausen said.  The prosecution contends Huguely was returning to his apartment after slamming Love's head against the wall in her bedroom in a nearby apartment building and that he took Love's computer and threw it in a dumpster. Love's roommate found her body facedown in a bloody pillow.  Huguely has pleaded not guilty to six charges. Huguely and Love, who played on UVa's women's lacrosse team, were on-and-off again boyfriend and girlfriend.  Clausen testified that at around 11:40 p.m. on May 2, he and Kevin Carroll, Huguely's roommate, went out for beer at a neighborhood store and returned about 20 minutes later to the second-floor apartment Huguely and Carroll shared. Clausen said when Huguely returned a short time later, they asked where he'd been. Huguely told them he had been downstairs with two other lacrosse players and that one of them, Chris Clements, was drunk.  Clausen said he knew that wasn't true because Clements had spent much of the day working on a term paper. "What he said wasn't adding up," Clausen said, adding there was "no reason to lie about something like that."  Among the last witnesses the prosecution presented were Clausen and other former teammates who testified that Huguely spent much of that Saturday drinking, even before a father-son golf tournament.  Clements, who testified he drank nothing that day, played in a foursome with his father and with Huguely and his father. Clements said there was alcohol on the golf cart and that Huguely was so intoxicated that he did not participate fully on every hole.  Clausen said he was in a car with Huguely and his father as they returned from golf and that father and son argued over volume on the radio. "He was drunk," Clausen said, "but I'd seen that before."  Clausen was among a group that ate dinner with Huguely and his father, and Clausen said Huguely dropped a bottle of wine and that his father told him to stop drinking. After they drove back from dinner, Clausen said, Huguely and his father remained in the car while Clausen and Carroll went up to the apartment.  Clausen said when Huguely came upstairs that Huguely said he was upset about a graduation gift from his father that he thought was "a scam." Clausen said Huguely was not able to articulate what he meant, noting only that Huguely seemed frustrated that his father was trying "to get him to sign some papers, whatever they were."  According to Huguely's videotaped police statement, which was played in court last week, he went to Love's apartment that night to talk to her and that he might have shaken her and grabbed her by the neck but that he had not done enough to harm her seriously.  Clausen was one of the top players on the UVa team. He was a three-time All-American and a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award, college lacrosse's Heisman Trophy. Clausen testified that teammates had become concerned about the frequency of Huguely's drinking, which Clausen said was "getting to the point where it seemed kind of ridiculous," calling him "more belligerent than the rest of us."
As prosecution wraps up its case, Ken Clausen and others detail bout of drinking, then sullen silence, in hours before Yeardley's Love death