Doug Young Found Guilty Of Rape

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – The rape case, attorneys on both sides of the courtroom agreed, came down to a question of who to believe: the alleged victim or the man she accused.

Did Doug Young assault and force his estranged wife, Heather Moore, to perform oral sex on him, as she testified? Or was the encounter consensual, as he claimed?

The jury believed Heather Moore.

After deliberating for just 90 minutes on Tuesday, the jury of eight men and four women delivered a guilty verdict on the one count of aggravated rape, and assessed Young a fine of $22,500.

“Fantastic,” an emotional Moore said of the verdict in a brief interview.

“The outcome makes the embarrassment worth it,” Moore said – a nod to the months she has spent detailing the rape to law enforcement, prosecutors and in public.

Young did not react when the verdict was read. He faces between 15 and 25 years in prison for the conviction.

Jurors reached their decision hours after hearing testimony from Young that the Dec. 1, 2007, encounter with Moore was consensual and that the two – who were married at the time – parted on good terms.

Young, a former superintendent for BurWil Construction with no prior criminal history, made his first public comments about the case – which became the subject of intense scrutiny by media and law enforcement when he and Moore disappeared in January with her vehicle, missing a court date and sparking a week-long manhunt.

As he prepared to testify on Monday afternoon – pushed back to Tuesday when the jury recessed – Young received this advice from his public defender, William Kennedy: “Nothing after Dec. 1.”

The remark was an apparent reminder to limit his comments to the Dec. 1 incident. Young’s arrest in January yielded subsequent criminal charges of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape and burglary, which are pending and which all attorneys carefully avoided in the course of the two-day trial.

“Do not embellish,” Kennedy audibly counseled his client at the defense bench.

Moore and Young gave largely similar accounts of their meeting at the house she rented, but veered in different directions on how Moore ended up on the floor, with one eye battered and a bleeding mouth.

Moore testified on Monday, and during a preliminary hearing in January, that Young grabbed her after she refused to give him a hug, shoved her and caused her to fall. The injuries to her lip and beneath her tongue came from him working his thumb around in her mouth after she bit down on it, she has said.

In his testimony, Young said that Moore became upset over another woman he was seeing and a comment he made about her mother, and stormed off down the hall. As he reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, Moore spun around and fell into a closet door, popping it out of the track, he said.

She bit his thumb, he testified, and then led him in to the master bedroom, out to the deck, and back to the bedroom. About five minutes later, Young told jurors, Moore initiated oral sex as he sat on the corner of the bed.

When asked by a prosecutor if he ejaculated, Young said, “I do not know.”

A forensic analysis introduced as evidence found Moore’s blood on her and Young’s clothing, and semen on a washcloth she used to stop the bleeding from her mouth. The analysis by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation also yielded DNA profiles that matched those of Young and Moore.

Young testified that Moore bit his thumb, and that she seemed upset after the sexual encounter, but did not offer an explanation when questioned by Kennedy or prosecutors.

Teresa Nelson, an assistant district attorney general, argued that Young’s testimony “doesn’t make sense.

“No woman would consent to oral sex while her mouth is still bleeding, her eye is still blacked, and she’s bruised all over her face and neck,” the prosecutor said in her closing argument.

In his last statement to jurors, Kennedy called the case a “he said, she said” scenario, arguing that the physical evidence did not prove rape, and that the conflicting testimonies of Young and Moore create reasonable doubt.

Another key issue raised by prosecutors – but not taken up by either, or by Kennedy, in their arguments – was that Young left the state and missed a court date in January. His failure to appear – and related charges – are the subject of a second trial, currently set for December.

But in his instructions to jurors, Circuit Court Judge Robert Montgomery said that flight “may justify an inference of guilt,” or that it may not.

Barry Staubus, the lead prosecutor, said in an interview after the trial that he avoided getting in to the facts related to the second case against Young.

Moore’s testimony “was the foundation,” Staubus said. “If they believed her, they could convict [Young].”

Kennedy was not available for comment following the verdict and did not return a phone call on Tuesday. As he left the courtroom, he instructed Young’s mother and sister not to talk to the media. The women gave no comment.

A sentencing date is set for Oct. 10.

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558