Huguely murder trial: Testimony details Love injuries as sides spar over what caused them

The prosecution and defense in the George Huguely murder trial on Monday used their questioning of the medical examiner who performed an autopsy on victim Yeardley Love to spar over the cause of Love’s injuries.

Defense attorney Rhonda Quagliana used her cross examination to suggest that many of Love’s injuries could have come from a fall to the carpeted floor of her bedroom.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman emphasized the number of bruises found on Love after her death in May 2010.

Huguely is facing murder charges in Love’s death. She was found face down on her bloody pillow in May 2010. At the time, both she and Huguely were 22-year-old University of Virginia lacrosse players weeks away from graduation.

The prosecution is working to show Huguely as a violent, jealous ex-boyfriend who had a tumultuous relationship with Love. In a taped interview with police, shown to jurors earlier in the trial, Huguely admitted to shaking her, but denied taking any action serious enough to kill her.

The defense is attacking medical conclusions and the interpretation of the circumstances leading up to Love’s death as they push for involuntary manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder.

The medical examiner’s office has previously said that Love died of blunt force trauma to the head, but Dr. William Gormley didn’t finish his testimony Monday. He is expected to be called by the prosecution again after experts on the brain testify.

Gormley did cover a number of injuries that Love sustained. He said a couple could have played a role in her death.

There was bleeding in the neck muscles above Love’s carotid sinus, a sensor in the neck that helps regulate blood pressure, he testified. That bleeding would be consistent with pressure on that point, which could have slowed or stopped Love’s heart, he testified.

“It doesn’t necessarily take a lot of pressure,” he said.

There was also a bruise on the right side of Love’s head, about two inches by three inches, he testified. There was no skull fracture below it, but it still could be a “candidate” for cause of death, he said.

Gormley also went over his initial, external examination of Love’s body, enumerating the various bruises, scrapes and lacerations (cuts from a blunt impact) that he had found.

“There’s a few bruises: here, here, and it looks like the largest one up here,” Gormley said describing one of the many photographs of Love’s body the prosecution introduced.

A few of the scrapes and bruises, he noted, clearly predated Love’s death. Others were harder to age, he said.

On cross-examination, he conceded that bruise aging is a rather inexact science, repeating a line from classes he teaches on the subject: “The take-home thing is never believe an exact date on a bruise.”

In general, he testified about what physical injuries there were to her body and about what could have happened, rather than what likely did happen.

For example, he said that a series of small oval bruises on her leg could have been left by someone’s fingers grabbing her there. But that’s just one possible explanation, and he has no way to be sure, he said.

Quagliana used that “consistent with” phraseology to promote the idea that many of Love’s injuries were sustained in a fall to the floor.

Gormley conceded that the bruise on the right side of her head, the injuries to the bottom of her chin (a bruise and a scrape), injury outside and inside her mouth below her lip, and the injury to her eye (swollen shut, according to testimony) would all be consistent with a fall.

He also testified that there were no injuries to the left side of Love’s face to indicate someone pushing the opposite side of her head into the floor.

But he said there was at least one injury to her head that wasn’t compatible with a fall to the floor: damage to her frenulum, a small delicate fold of tissue under the upper lip just below the nose.

Had Love damaged her frenulum in a fall to the carpet, he testified, she should also have sustained damage to her nose, which she did not.

There were no marks on her shoulders or body as if she had been shaken violently, Gormley testified under cross examination.

Chapman drew from Gormley that simply because he conceded several injuries could be caused by one event did not mean that he was saying they had been.

He also asked Gormley about the autopsy report, which jurors will be able to review, pointing out that it will allow jurors to enumerate for themselves the bruises on Love’s body.

While the discussion of Love’s injuries offered the most compelling debate of the day, much of Monday’s courtroom time was spent establishing facts about forensic evidence, including a fingerprint found on a doorframe at Love’s apartment and items seized from Huguely’s apartment.

One member of the Charlottesville Police Department, Sgt. Eric Pendleton, went through, at Chapman’s behest, more than 50 photographs documenting the search of Huguely’s apartment from the front door to the closet where “nothing of evidentiary value” was found, and identified more than a dozen items of seized physical evidence, including a stained white T-shirt, which was one of several items walked back and forth in front of the jury box.

According to a defense motion filed in October, it emerged at a preliminary hearing in April that the shirt did not have blood on it.

The trial continues this morning in Charlottesville Circuit Court.