Huguely trial: Testimony centers on twisting of Love's head

Jurors in George Huguely’s murder trial heard testimony from forensic scientists in Charlottesville Circuit Court on Tuesday, including scientists who performed the autopsy of Yeardley Love’s body.

Medical experts testified that shortly prior to her death, Love’s head turned so quickly that it created a torque motion, which caused potentially fatal damage to her brain stem.

Christine Fuller, a neuropathologist at the Medical College of Virginia, said that the quick, twisted motion of Love’s head may have caused bleeding in the brain stem, which connects to the spinal cord.

Dr. Maria Beatriz Lopes, a neuropathologist at the University of Virginia, echoed Fuller’s assessment in her own testimony later Tuesday.

Love was found face-down and unresponsive in her 14th Street Northwest apartment just after 2 a.m. on May 3, 2010. Huguely, 24, her ex-boyfriend and a fellow UVa lacrosse player, is on trial for charges of first-degree murder, felony murder, robbery, burglary, statutory burglary and grand larceny. He is being represented by Rhonda Quagliana and Francis McQ. Lawrence, while Dave Chapman and Claude Worrell are prosecuting the case.

Fuller said that she was involved in Love’s autopsy, and that during examination she found lesions and contusions — “a fancy word for a bruise” — on Love’s brain.

“It’s caused by blunt force trauma to the brain,” she said of the injuries. “The issue with how one gets contusions in the brain has to do with the brain moving separately from the skull.”

She explained that in a situation where the body is moving at some speed and then abruptly stopped, the brain may collide with the skull, causing damage. In cross-examination, Fuller said this sort of injury could “potentially” result from a fall.

A collision of the brain and skull involving some degree of torque, like what she said she thinks Love experienced, can cause other, more serious injuries, Fuller told jurors.

She explained that axons are extremely delicate neurotransmitters, and are even more fragile than blood vessels. Force, especially a twisting force, can cause these axons to rip, which in turn can cause small hemorrhages in the brain. On a photograph, Fuller identified several small hemorrhages that suggest Love may have suffered from an injury related to the rapid twisting of her head and neck.

Fuller said she considers hemorrhaging in “this distribution” to be the result of “blunt force trauma to the head.”

“If you find hemorrhages in that area, its trauma, period,” she said of injuries near Love’s brain stem. The brain stem, she explained, is the most primitive part of the brain, and controls basic functions like the circulatory control, cardiovascular system control and consciousness.

Quagliana asked Fuller how quickly Love would have died as a result of these injuries.

“The best medical opinion I can give is that [Love’s death] would have been rapid,” Fuller testified. She specified that her death would not have been instantaneous, but more likely taken about two hours.

Lopes, who wrote Love’s autopsy report, testified that she had access to a stain — that is, a type of dye used to highlight different aspects of tissue for analysis — that Fuller didn’t. As such, she was able to get a look at damaged cells in Love’s brain that Fuller could only deduce were there by damage to blood vessels.

Lopes pointed out a number of the cells to jurors. She said she couldn’t be certain if some of the cells were damaged by trauma or by a subsequent lack of oxygen.

The way the samples responded to her stains told her that Love was alive for somewhere between two and six hours after she sustained her injuries.

Testimony has suggested that Huguely was at Love’s apartment at around midnight. Love was discovered by her roommate just after 2 a.m.

Lopes was definite on cross-examination that Love would have been alive for at least two hours after receiving her injuries, though she made no speculation about how conscious Love would have been during that time.

Chapman asked her, “Are you able to rule out reperfusion injury [caused by CPR] in this case?”

“Yes,” she said.

The defense has suggested that much of the damage to Love’s lower brain could have come from CPR done on her in a failed attempt to revive her. The reintroduction of blood carrying oxygen to damaged brain tissue can actually cause further damage in some cases.

The prosecution has used its witnesses to suggest that there is no indication her heart ever restarted and that manual resuscitation attempts wouldn’t have moved enough blood to cause such damage.

The prosecution is expected to rest sometime today, at which time Huguely’s defense team will have the opportunity to call its own witnesses.

Daily Progress staff writer Ted Strong contributed to this story.