More on the Judge Ruling the School Nurse Unqualified to Testify About Catatonic States at the Adnan Syed Trial

In yesterday’s Addendum episode of the Undisclosed Podcast, we talked a bit about the school nurse being precluded from testifying at Adnan’s second trial. In this entry, I will post the relevant portions of the documents as well as some of the discussion of the issue that took place at trial. 

On January 7th, the defense filed a motion in limine which sought to preclude the school nurse from testifying that she thought that Adnan might be faking a catatonic state after the discovery of Hae’s body. Here’s the motion:

In turn, on January 18th, Judge Heard granted that motion, finding that it was evident that Sharon Watts was not qualified to testify on this issue. Here is her discussion of the issue.

Later, at trial, the prosecution tried to get Judge Heard to revisit this issue and find that Watts was qualified to testify on this issue. But, according to Judge Heard, the State was in a Catch-22:

In other words, even if Judge Heard were to change her prior ruling and conclude that Watts was qualified to testify on this issue, that would simply mean that her testimony would be about a privileged communication, making it inadmissible.

-CM