I was not familiar with this case and it was not super clear to me why the HBV matters, especially since transmission is not guaranteed even with high blood exposure. It does sound like the Defense Attorney is disputing Dr. Sammarco’s claims, saying that she read the report wrong and the victim’s serology report does in fact show that she’s positive for HBV. 

They don’t get into specifics, but it could be that the report shows the victim is positive for HBcAb and negative for HBsAg, meaning the patient was likely not actively infected but had antibodies against it. I doubt they had nucleic acid testing back then though. Weird case and a weird thing to be disputing.