Doug Young files motion for new trial

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – Facing what amounts to a life sentence, a Bristol man convicted of beating, raping and kidnapping his ex-wife in January 2008 has filed a motion for a new trial.

Doug Young, 49, was sentenced to 50 years in prison in September – which is on top of the 22-year sentence he received in 2008 after a jury convicted him of a similar offense, also against his ex-wife.

Just a month separated the two incidents that resulted in charges against Young. Both involved the same victim, under similar circumstances, with similar details. And during Young’s August 2009 trial, the presiding judge allowed certain details from the earlier December 2007 offense to bleed into the second trial – a decision that Young’s attorney contends was in error.

“It was an error for the court to allow evidence of the first trial from the Dec. 1, 2007, incident into evidence” in the second trial, Brad Sproles, Young’s court-appointed defender, said in a phone interview Friday.

Young’s first conviction for aggravated rape in August 2008 is currently on appeal. His second conviction – on four counts of aggravated rape, aggravated assault, aggravated burglary and especially aggravated kidnapping – might be headed that way, too.

At trial, Sproles filed motions and argued to limit prosecutors from bringing up details relating to Young’s prior offense.

“Certain questions are problematic,” Sproles argued at the August hearing. “Some questions lead to the status of that case, and issues that are unfairly prejudicial to the defendant.”

But Criminal Court Judge Robert Montgomery allowed prosecutors to question Young about why he skipped a January 2008 court hearing on charges of the aggravated rape of his then-estranged wife, Heather Moore. Here the two offenses overlapped: Young missed the hearing for the earlier charge at a time prosecutors charged he had committed a second, separate crime of kidnapping his then-estranged wife.

Moore testified that she and Young missed the hearing because Young had kidnapped her; but Young said they had taken a random vacation, and missed the hearing because the two of them were “trying to figure out a way for her not to get into trouble” by recanting her statement that he had attacked and raped her.

Sproles, in his motion for a new trial, also objects to Montgomery giving the jury an instruction about impeaching the testimony of a witness, “leaving the jury with the impression that Mr. Young’s testimony had been impeached.” He could not elaborate on this claim Friday, noting that he had not yet received a transcript of the trial.

Sproles also will contend that all of Young’s sentences should have run together. Montgomery imposed the maximum sentence on each charge, and ran the 25-year sentences for both the rapes and the kidnapping consecutively.

A hearing on Sproles’ motion had been set for Friday, but was rescheduled for Dec. 4. If Montgomery declines to grant it, Sproles has indicated he will appeal.

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