Attorneys for Ryan Duke looking to have new indictment thrown out

ATLANTA — Atlanta-area attorneys for Ryan Duke are expected to file motions to dismiss a new indictment against their client.

Duke was found not guilty of murdering former teacher and beauty queen Tara Grinstead last month. But on Friday, he was indicted on new charges.

Channel 2′s Tony Thomas has covered this case from the beginning. On Monday he asked prosecutors for comment and insight into the latest indictment in the puzzling 17-year-old case, but so far, they have not responded.

Defense attorneys will be filing their response very soon.

“They made the decision, for whatever reason, that they were not going to basically rest in regard to Ryan Duke,” metro Atlanta attorney Phil Holloway said.

Just days after an Irwin County jury found Duke not guilty of murder, a new indictment in a neighboring county accuses him of several more crimes including concealing a death and tampering with evidence in the 2005 death of Grinstead. They are crimes he admitted to on the stand in his murder trial.

“When you helped pile the wood in the orchard, was that the last time you saw Ms. Grinstead?” prosecutors asked Duke during his trial.

“It was,” he answered.

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The jury found Duke not guilty of murdering the teacher and former beauty queen but convicted him on a concealing a death charge -- some of the same charges he now faces in the new indictment.

Thomas asked Holloway about the rules against charging someone twice in the same crime.

“You can commit the same crime over and over again in repeated ways,” Holloway said.

Holloway said since the crime allegedly happened in a different county, the same charge can be filed again.

Duke’s Atlanta area-based attorneys are expected to try and get the indictment dismissed, accusing prosecutors of waiting too long to file these latest charges.

“This grand jury got the date wrong, and the question is why?” Holloway said.

Another area of attack -- exactly who are prosecutors saying killed Grinstead?

Some who have read the indictment believe they have switched their tune and say Bo Dukes, “did unlawfully destroy the body of Tara Faye Grinstead, a human being, evidence of the crime of murder, a felony, a crime the accused knew or had reasonable grounds to believe had been committed by Bo Dukes.”

“What you hear will come down to this -- Ryan Duke confessed,” prosecutors said during Duke’s trial.

Duke is in prison starting his 10-year sentence for concealing the body in Irwin County.

Dukes, who was already convicted of lying to Georgia Bureau of Investigation, will go to trial later this month in Ben Hill County for his alleged role in the coverup.

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