Jury selection got underway Monday in West Palm Beach for Larry Darnell Young, the man accused in a December 2021 shooting that killed a 16-year-old girl. The case is back in a Palm Beach County courtroom after an appeals court threw out social media evidence that prosecutors said helped link Young to the gunfire, putting renewed focus on eyewitness accounts and other disputed identification evidence that have already tested earlier juries.
According to WPBF, the retrial was set to kick off at 10 a.m. Monday, with the court expected to work through jury selection and early fights over what the new panel will be allowed to hear after the appeals ruling.
Appeals Court Tossed Key Facebook Evidence
In a 2024 opinion the Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed Young’s convictions after finding that a detective reviewed Facebook records, initially obtained with a warrant in an unrelated retail theft case, without getting a second warrant tied to the homicide investigation. The panel ruled that the warrantless search violated the Fourth Amendment, rejected the state’s argument that officers acted in good faith, then wiped out the conviction and ordered a new trial under tighter evidence rules.
Case History and the Victim
Young was tried and convicted in 2023 on charges that included manslaughter and attempted manslaughter in the killing of a 16-year-old West Palm Beach girl, and records and reporting show he began serving a sentence that stretched across decades before the appeal. Prosecutors say the shooting unfolded on Dec. 10, 2021, near the 500 block of 17th Street, when a stray bullet hit the teen as she sat in a car. Young’s then-girlfriend, Keosha Carn, was prosecuted separately, convicted of murder and later sentenced to life in prison, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Evidence at Issue
The appeals court found that investigators had obtained months of Young’s Facebook data under the retail theft warrant, then combed through those files for homicide evidence without returning to a judge for a new warrant. That search turned up private messages, a photo of a person holding a rifle and subscriber data that tied the account to a phone number that was called shortly before the shooting, material the panel said could have swayed jurors on the key question of who pulled the trigger. Those records are now barred from Young’s retrial. The Fourth District Court of Appeal opinion lays out the legal analysis in detail.
What to Watch in Court
With the Facebook threads off the table, prosecutors will have to lean on eyewitness identifications, phone data and other forensic links still in the file. Earlier reporting noted that witnesses described seeing a man with gold teeth, and that detectives used license-plate readers along with other records to build their case. Those strands of evidence are expected to be front and center this time around. WPTV covered the original arrests and how investigators identified their suspects.
Next Steps
How quickly a jury is seated and how the first witnesses land are likely to shape whether prosecutors can convince twelve new jurors of Young’s identity and intent without the suppressed social media trail. The retrial is expected to stretch over several days, and potentially weeks, as lawyers battle over the slimmer set of evidence that survived the appeals court ruling.
