The medical records of murdered University of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love will remain sealed except information regarding her Adderall prescription, Charlottesville Judge Robert H. Downer Jr. ruled on Wednesday. Downer privately reviewed Love’s medical records dating back more than four years and ruled in a five-minute hearing that nothing in the documents — apart from her legally prescribed Adderall dosage — is relevant to the defense’s case. Defense attorneys for George Huguely, the U.Va. lacrosse player charged in Love’s death, had requested the medical records.
Downer said Love’s mother, Sharon, had protested the request in a letter addressed to the court.
Huguely’s lawyer subpoenaed the medical records, which included a 14-page questionnaire that the university’s student athletes fill out, in a quest for evidence that the 22-year-old Love was taking prescription drugs or had pre-existing conditions that could have contributed to her death.
Lead defense attorney Francis McQ. Lawrence argued in a hearing last week that the records are critical to building his case that Love did not die from blunt force trauma — as the state’s medical examiner ruled in July — but instead suffered a cardiac arrhythmia caused by limited blood flow to her brain.
Prosecutor Dave Chapman called the plea a “fishing expedition” because it lacked any narrow purpose. He said he had no problem fulfilling Lawrence’s reduced request for information on Love’s usage of Adderall, an amphetamine drug commonly prescribed for attention deficit disorder.
Lawrence says the Adderall, which medical examiners found trace evidence of in Love’s bloodstream, could have weakened her heart and made her more susceptible to a cardiac arrhythmia.
Examiners traced less than 0.05 milliliters of Adderall per liter of blood in Love, and measured her blood alcohol content at 0.14 percent — the amount equal to roughly four 12-ounce beers for a woman Love’s size — according to William Gormley, the medical examiner who performed Love’s autopsy.
Huguely, of Chevy Chase, has been locked in a Charlottesville jail cell for seven months awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges for the beating death of Love, his former girlfriend.
Police arrested and charged Huguely hours after they found Love’s body lying facedown on the bed of her Charlottesville apartment on May 3.
Huguely told police during questioning that he fought with Love on the night she died, and recalled shaking her while her head hit the wall.
His preliminary hearing on the case is scheduled for Jan. 21.
