HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A new trial will have to be scheduled for a Huntington man who was convicted of second-degree sexual assault in 2011 for an alleged incident that happened in 2008 at the Rugby House near Marshall University’s campus.
With a 3-2 decision Monday, the state Supreme Court reversed Bryan Scott Maggard’s conviction, citing a number of judicial errors, and remanded the case back to Cabell County Circuit Court for further consideration.
Justice Allen Loughry and Justice Margaret Workman were the dissenting votes.
At the time of the alleged assault, Bryan Scott Maggard, now 29, was a Marshall student and so was the victim. The victim said she was held down and raped at the Rugby House, an off campus property, after agreeing to watch a movie with Maggard and nothing more.
Maggard was convicted of one count of second-degree sexual assault and acquitted of one count of second-degree sexual assault. He was serving time on probation and extended supervision but was returned to jail last year for violating his probation.
In Monday’s ruling, the majority cited five different errors from the circuit court, including the failure of prosecutors to present enough evidence to sustain a conviction.
Justice Loughry wrote the following in his dissent: “The majority’s startlingly terse opinion, which reverses the petitioner’s conviction following a two-day jury trial, smacks of the worst kind of result-oriented jurisprudence. On the basis of cursory and incomplete legal analysis, the majority deprives the victim in this case of the justice which she deserves and suggests to similarly situated victims that review of the proceedings in their cases are not worthy of this Court’s thorough and fully developed analysis.”
Read the full majority opinion and dissent at www.courtswv.gov.