A bottle of Adderall found in Yeardley Love’s backpack during a police search of her apartment has captured the attention of defense attorneys for 23-year-old George Huguely, the former UVA student accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend. This morning, medical examiners offered competing perspectives on Love’s cause of death, and whether an irregular heartbeat brought on by amphetamines played a role—a question defense attorneys could pursue further if provided access to Love’s medical records.
In November, Huguely’s attorneys filed subpoenae to obtain Love’s medical records from UVA and a local rescue squad—requests that Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman deemed "grossly overbroad." Charlottesville General District Court Judge Robert Downer said he would review case information in his chambers to determine what portions of Love’s medical records are material, then inform counsel of his decision.
"I’m not going to permit a fishing expedition," said Downer, repeating a phrase from Chapman’s arguments.
A private medical consultant hired by Huguely’s defense team testified that Love’s medical history could show whether an arrhythmogenic medicine, coupled with Adderall, might have given Love cardiac arrhythmia. Asked whether he was satisfied with blunt-force trauma as Love’s reported cause of death, Jack Daniel—a forensic pathologist and lawyer based in Richmond—responded, "No."
In a brief interview following his court appearance, Daniel told C-VILLE he was hired by the defense to examine Love’s brain. In court, Daniel said some of Love’s brain injuries could be attribtued to a lack of oxygen to the brain, while some cortical contusions could be attributed to "vigorous CPR." Cross-examined by Chapman, Daniel conceded to prosecution that the amount of amphetamine in Love’s system was "not a sky-high amount."
Love’s toxicology report returned less than 0.05 milligrams of amphetamine per liter of blood. Additionally, her blood-alcohol content was reported at 0.14. The Code of Virginia puts the amount of methamphetamine necessary for a Driving While Intoxicated classification at 0.1 milligram per liter of blood, and the blood-alcohol limit at 0.08.
Prior to Daniel, prosecuting attorney Dave Chapman asked medical examiner William Gormley, who was tasked with Love’s autopsy, whether Love’s medical records would illuminate any of the injuries documented in her autopsy. Gormley replied, "No." Cross-examined by Huguely’s attorney, Rhonda Quagliana, Gormley said he could not see cardiac arrhythmia as a cause of the brain injuries, but possibly as a result of them.
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