Lawyer says Fawley indictment “flawed”

MATHEWS, Va. (AP) – The indictment charging an amateur photographer with killing college student Taylor Behl is “irreparably flawed” and should be thrown out, a lawyer representing Benjamin Fawley claims in a motion filed Thursday in Mathews Circuit Court.

The motion is one of five filed by defense lawyer Bill Johnson on behalf of Fawley, who is facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of the 17-year-old former Virginia Commonwealth University student. Behl disappeared from campus Sept. 5, and her decomposed remains were found in a shallow ravine in Mathews County a month later.

The indictment, filed Jan. 17, charges Fawley with intentionally killing Behl and planning her death, and then offers several possible accompanying charges such as rape, sodomy and abduction, making the actual charge Fawley faces unclear, Johnson wrote.

A phone message seeking comment left by The Associated Press at the Mathews County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office on Thursday night was not immediately returned.

The motions also request that the defense gain access to evidence gathered by investigators, including copies of Behl’s credit card and cell phone bills from Feb. 1 to Sept. 30, 2005, lists of items seized during searches of Fawley’s apartment and Behl’s car, and computer-related information investigators took from Fawley’s and Behl’s computers that pertain to the sexual relationships of Fawley and Behl.

Fawley’s lawyers also are seeking the names and contact information, including the age, of “any person known or suspected to have had a sexual relationship, however brief, with Taylor Behl since Feb. 1, 2005,” according to court documents.

Fawley also seeks permission to hire a sexual behavior expert to explain erotic asphyxiation – the restriction of breathing during sexual intercourse to heighten the pleasure. Fawley told police that Behl died during consensual erotic asphyxiation.

His trial is scheduled to begin May 30.