Youngblood trial set for October
The retrial of Denver A. Youngblood, Jr. on sexual assault charges has been scheduled to begin on Tuesday, October 23, in Morgan County Circuit Court.
Judge Gina Groh scheduled the new trial on Monday during a hearing at which Youngblood participated via teleconference from prison, where he is serving a sentence from an unrelated conviction.
Youngblood, 34, was convicted in 2003 of two counts of sexually assaulting a young woman, two counts of brandishing a firearm and one count of indecent exposure, all during the same night in July, 2000. He has been serving a 26-to-56 year sentence for those crimes.
Youngblood's conviction was overturned last month by the West Virginia Supreme Court. By a 3-2 ruling, the State Supreme Court ruled that he deserved a new trial because State Police had not taken into evidence a note that was supposedly written by the victim's friends and left in the home where the sexual assault allegedly took place.
Youngblood's attorney, Robert C. Stone, claimed that if he had known of the note, it could have been used as defense evidence.
