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Patriots TE Aaron Hernandez to be Questioned

CloakNNNdagger said:
So Hernandez was present and admittedly "witnessed" the shooting.

An interesting comment by a reader of the Boston.com Hernandez article.:


Although I many times doubt it, I hope that these jurors have just a crumb of common sense.
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After my one and only time to serve on a jury I decided for myself that I will never try to get out of jury duty. Too important IMO to leave it to people I don't know.
 
paycheck71 said:
After my one and only time to serve on a jury I decided for myself that I will never try to get out of jury duty. Too important IMO to leave it to people I don't know.
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Me too....I was on a slam-dunk murder case that came too close to a hung jury for my taste. I can't believe the evidence people will ignore if they like the defendant.
 
Aaron Hernandez yuks it up as jury deliberates on his fate down the hall
By Dan Wetzel
FALL RIVER, Mass. – Down the hall, seven women and five men were deciding his fate. Whether Aaron Hernandez was capable of comprehending that, or cared enough to bother, the odds are it probably wasn't going too well down there.

Not that he seemed too concerned either way.

Late Tuesday afternoon, with Hernandez's murder case off to jury, the former NFL star spent about an hour and a half leaning back in his swivel chair at a defense table here in this fifth-floor courtroom, spinning around to chat with his fiancée and an aunt and uncle in the front row. He got to hang out until court was officially adjourned for the day, in other words until the jury called it quits at about 4:30 p.m. ET

So hang out he did.

He smiled. He laughed. He quietly swapped stories.

He looked at ease, comfortable and carefree, not like someone who any minute could get word that a jury had deemed him a cold-blooded murderer, sending him to prison for the rest of his life. Even if the 25-year-old former football player believes he'll be acquitted, the strain from the magnitude of the moment would presumably crush most mortals.

That's been his demeanor throughout this case though, starting with the day he was arrested and hauled out of his 7,100-square foot home, with the backyard pool and basement man cave featuring a New England Patriots-logoed pool table.

The Bristol County Sheriff said they put everyone facing serious charges into protective custody, with a suicide watch, because the realization of the situation rocks even the most hardened criminals. They cry. They scream. They panic. Not Hernandez though.

"He didn't seem at all nervous," Sheriff Thomas Hodgson told the Washington Post at the time.

That what-me-worry disposition continued across weeks of jury selection and testimony, Hernandez making himself at home at his own murder trial. He always looked upbeat, attentive and well-rested. He took notes. He chatted with his attorney. It wasn't an act. Even when the jury wasn't around, he never broke mood.

Court officers said he expressed excitement about the lunches – even though they consist of just a simple sandwich and six ounces of off-brand cola. Maybe every place is great compared to 21 hours a day in a 7-by-10-foot cell.

At one point this week, when his water pitcher was empty, he looked at a court officer and tapped its side to signal the need for a refill, like he might have once summoned a waitress for another round of cocktails at some Boston nightclub.

This was Tuesday afternoon though, the arguing done, time dwindling, stakes rising.

Much of his defense had fallen apart. Day after day, as snowdrifts formed and then thawed across this New England winter, his high-profile, high-priced legal team had fought the prosecution's 132 witnesses tooth and nail, challenging everything about the night Odin Lloyd wound up dead in a field near Hernandez's North Attleboro, Mass., home.

During closing arguments, though, attorney James Sultan waved the white flag on much of it. He essentially admitted that the cellphone tower pings and surveillance video and tire marks and shoe imprints were correct all along. If he'd done this back in January, he could've spared the jurors about six weeks of tedium.

Yes, Sultan acknowledged, Aaron Hernandez was there in an undeveloped plot of industrial park as Lloyd was pumped full of bullets and left to rot in the early morning hours of June 17, 2013.

Heck, Hernandez had even driven the car to get there. Oh, and yes, Sultan acknowledged, it is possible that was a gun his client was carrying in home video minutes after the murder, just like, it is possible that the box Hernandez's fiancée spirited out of the house the next day to some dumpster she conveniently can't recall may have even held that same gun.

He didn't do the killing though. He was just there. And you can't be sure the gun is a .45 Glock, Model 21 semiautomatic pistol. As sure as it might be, it might also not be. And there's no proof about what's in that box, as suspicious and ridiculous as Shayanna Jenkins' story is.

"This is a court of law,” Sultan said, smoothly, during Tuesday's closing argument. "This isn't a mystery show."

Beyond a reasonable doubt, he kept saying, which sounds good, but it meant this entire game was being played inside Hernandez's own five-yard line, a dangerous bit of turf on which to fight.

When not hammering reasonable doubt, Sultan fell back on the oldest of excuses for a star athlete: He's young and he made a mistake. He isn't a bad guy; he's just a little dumb. Please, give him another chance.

"Did he make all the right decisions? No,” Sultan said, parroting who knows how many football coaches gone by. "He was a 23-year-old kid who witnessed something shocking – a killing committed by somebody he knew. He didn't know what to do, so he just put one foot in front of the other."

Hernandez didn't look offended by the argument that he was a helpless adolescent who shouldn't be held accountable for his actions, despite being a multimillionaire pro athlete who fashioned himself some kind of off-field gangster, what with the guns and the weed and the supposedly grown-man "Blood Sweat Tears" tattoos.

Pretty much the whole defense hinges on the Hail Mary that a juror or twelve will actually buy the idea that an alpha dog such as Hernandez was actually nothing more than little, lost child (albeit rich and famous) to a couple of cheap Connecticut drug dealers, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, who got hopped up on PCP that night and unexpectedly killed Aaron's good buddy Odin.

It doesn't explain the next day, though, when Hernandez sat around his house at ease with a couple of guys who are supposedly capable of slipping into a drug-fueled homicidal rage. They splashed around the pool. They kicked it around the man cave. They drank smoothies together.

Later Hernandez gave them a rental car to leave the state and had his fiancée, with his infant daughter in the backseat, meet them in the middle of the night at a random spot off an interstate to hand over hundreds of dollars.

At different points, video even shows Hernandez passing that baby girl to Wallace so he could hold and cuddle her. Hernandez then left the room.

Maybe he's just unusually trusting of supposed PCP killers.

"This defendant has his 8-month infant and is handing her to Wallace, apparently the guy, the crazy man who apparently killed Odin the day before?" railed prosecutor William McCauley, exasperated at the ridiculousness. "Handing her to Wallace?

"… Settle this case on the evidence," McCauley demanded to the jury. "Not, 'Oh yeah, there was a fox out there, maybe there was a fox hunter in the neighborhood, maybe he shot Odin Lloyd.' "

The fox in the courthouse didn't seem too worried about McCauley's rants or what the jury might be contemplating or the fate of his young family or regret over all that was lost, including his undoubtedly dwindling (depleted?) bank account.

Aaron Hernandez must have spent a fortune, perhaps his entire fortune, on this trial, so why not enjoy it.

Sure it was his fate that was being hashed out, but since all the attorneys were relaxed and congenial, and court workers discussed comp time and well-earned vacations, he too might as well lean back and laugh with his girl Shay.

Truth is, he may never again have it this good, still technically presumed innocent.

"That's funny," he mouthed after hearing one of her stories, a fine spring afternoon melting away.
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The first part speaks to his sociopathy, imo. Interesting viewpoint.
 
Playoffs said:
Aaron Hernandez yuks it up as jury deliberates on his fate down the hall
By Dan Wetzel


The first part speaks to his sociopathy, imo. Interesting viewpoint.
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He probably is a sociopath, but I tried to imagine what I would do in his situation. This has gone on for almost 2 years now. His fate is being decided NOW. I don't know if I could smile and laugh, but I would definitely try to disassociate myself from the situation, since it's completely out of my hands, just to keep my sanity.

Whether he should be feeling remorse, that's a different story. If he has the ability for that, he probably already has and will again after the verdict. If he's a socio or psychopath, he probably won't and this part really doesn't apply to him.
 
Watch the short VIDEO midway down the page. Would you trust the "surprise" defense that his attorney threw out to the jury at the end of closing remarks? He was evidently so convinced himself, that he couldn't speak to it off the cuff and had to read his laughable logic-defying statement word for word. I'm surprised that his attorney could avoid bursting out in laughter himself during his own sorely unconvincing comedic explanation........... just as a comedian sometimes breaks down in mid joke and starts laughing since his joke is so funny.
 
Being out this long and debating the gun charges has me thinking he is about to walk on the murder.
 
JB said:
Do juries deliberate over the weekend?
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Since they aren't sequestered, I am pretty sure they took the weekend off.

I was trying to think why they would ask about the gun charges when it would be nothing but an afterthought if convicted of murder. Did they think they could agree on that quickly then move on to murder or is murder so unlikely they are seeing if they can get him on anything. Either seems possible I guess.
 
TD said:
Since they aren't sequestered, I am pretty sure they took the weekend off.

I was trying to think why they would ask about the gun charges when it would be nothing but an afterthought if convicted of murder. Did they think they could agree on that quickly then move on to murder or is murder so unlikely they are seeing if they can get him on anything. Either seems possible I guess.
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Probably taking the charges one by one and seeing if easy verdict on easy charges
 
TD said:
Since they aren't sequestered, I am pretty sure they took the weekend off.

I was trying to think why they would ask about the gun charges when it would be nothing but an afterthought if convicted of murder. Did they think they could agree on that quickly then move on to murder or is murder so unlikely they are seeing if they can get him on anything. Either seems possible I guess.
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Having hung outside a jury room a lot, don't read into questions. They're coming up with **** you never thought of. Really. It could be order of charges to one juror thinking it doesn't count if he didn't own the weapon.

Now there are some hilarious fake jury question stories around.
 
In summary:


MURDER CHARGE

If jurors find Hernandez guilty of murder, they must decide whether it is first-degree or second-degree murder.

To convict him of first-degree murder, they must find that Hernandez caused Lloyd’s death. They must also find at least one of two scenarios: that he did so intentionally and with deliberate premeditation; or, that he did so with extreme atrocity or cruelty, and that he either intended to kill him, cause grave harm to him or intended to do something that he knew would likely cause Lloyd to die. It carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

For a second-degree murder conviction, jurors must find that Hernandez caused Lloyd’s death, and that he either intended to kill him, cause grave harm to him or intended to do something that he knew would likely cause Lloyd to die. It carries an automatic sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.

POSSESSION CHARGES

Hernandez is also charged with unlawful possession of a firearm – the .45-caliber gun police say was used in the killing and has never been found. And he’s charged with unlawful possession of .22-caliber ammunition. Police found a box of .22-caliber ammunition in his basement. The firearm charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 18 months, with a five-year maximum. The ammunition charge carries no minimum and a two-year maximum.
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link
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
In summary:

To convict him of first-degree murder, they must find that Hernandez caused Lloyd’s death.

For a second-degree murder conviction, jurors must find that Hernandez caused Lloyd’s death
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link
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Going back to an earlier post in the thread, I'm assuming that "caused his death" includes just being there as part of a conspiracy to kill Lloyd, and not necessarily pulling the trigger.
 
infantrycak said:
Things like a Plaintiff's attorney conspiring with the judge to pull a practical joke on the defense lawyers by having a "jury question" come out - "how many zeroes are in a billion?"
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The one time I was on a jury, we ended up asking for the definition of "reasonable doubt" because a couple of people didn't know where the line was for them. I'm sure there was a face palm or two when the judge got the question.
 
xtruroyaltyx said:
Found guilty
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On all counts.

Life without parole -- no death in Massachusetts.

Props to the jury and the prosecution.

Hernandez pretty much expressionless as deputies surround him after first guilty announced.

Judge Garsh was at her best in statements discharging the jury.
 
wellbyecurlybill.jpg
 
Playoffs said:
On all counts.

Life without parole -- no death in Massachusetts.

Props to the jury and the prosecution.

Hernandez pretty much expressionless as deputies surround him after first guilty announced.
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Being reported by folks in the know at the trial he looked at jury and said you're wrong.
 
Jury heard that Hernandez said he showed Odin "the spot"... which was not clarified further for the jury but we believe meaning the location of the prior double murder that Hernandez will now be tried for.

And that second trial means Hernandez will be doing easier jail time until the trials are complete, then he'll be sent to prison.
 
Greg A. Bedard ‏@GregABedard · 17m17 minutes ago
Hernandez sentenced to MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole, where he can probably hear Gillette Stadium on Sundays from the yard.
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lol
 
The day I laid my Odin to rest, my heart stopped beating...

I wanted to go into that hole with him.
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Just like God left his footprints in the sand,

My baby's footprints are in my heart forever. I love him dearly.
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Odin Lloyd's mother, Ursula


Jury looks pretty young overall. All agree to interview, wont discuss their deliberations.
 
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To be honest , I'm a little bit surprised they came back with a conviction at all much less for first degree murder.
That's not to say I think he is innocent as I do believe he is guilty & was probably the trigger man too , just that much of the case is circumstantial.
 
cdollaz said:
It didn't help him when his lawyer put him at the scene during closing arguments.
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Since DNA evidence overwhelmingly proved his presence at the scene, it was a last ditch effort to try to give the jury some crumb to consider all that was left..........complicity in 2nd degree murder.
 
Today 2:12 pm THE NEW YORKER
The Arrogance of Aaron Hernandez
By Brendan I. Koerner


When Aaron Hernandez’s murder trial began, in late January, the proceedings received surprisingly scant attention-perhaps because the former New England Patriots tight end seemed so obviously guilty of killing his friend and designated blunt roller Odin Lloyd, who was twenty-seven. But drama abounded as the trial wore on for weeks and weeks, thanks in part to Hernandez’s astute legal team. Damning evidence was excluded and key prosecution witnesses were made to look foolish; the lack of a credible motive seemed to be a boon to the defense. When the jury entered its seventh day of deliberations, this morning, a hung jury seemed like a safe bet; that its members instead returned with a first-degree-murder conviction is a testament to their ability to see through the best legal obfuscation that Hernandez’s money could buy.

Now that Hernandez, who is twenty-five, has been sentenced to life without parole, numerous interview clips from his football career seem quite sinister in hindsight. None is eerier than one from November 8, 2012, two days after the birth of his daughter, in which he opines on the life-changing nature of fatherhood. At that moment, Hernandez’s chief sins were assumed to be an excessive fondness for strip clubs and cannabis. “I may be the young and wild but I’m not. … I’m engaged now, and I have a baby,” Hernandez mused by his locker in Gillette Stadium. “It’s just gonna make me think of life a lot differently. And doing things the right way, because now another one’s looking up to me, I can’t just be young and reckless Aaron no more.” Hernandez sold the redemption cliché perfectly, employing pensive pauses and a sheepish grin to emphasize the sincerity of his newfound dedication to domestic bliss. According to Boston prosecutors, however, Hernandez’s criminal résumé already included a double homicide, possibly over a spilled drink. (Hernandez will stand trial for those charges at a later date, still to be determined.)

In the months following the birth of his daughter, Hernandez behaved less like a family man than like an arrogant personification of the human id, intent on testing just how much his celebrity and wealth could protect him from the consequences of malfeasance. He punched out windows when his fiancée dared to break up one of his bacchanals; he engaged in tussles with fellow night-club patrons, during which handguns were flashed; he allegedly shot one of his friends in the face when the man questioned how a bar tab should be divvied up. The murder of Lloyd, who was shot repeatedly in an industrial park near Hernandez’s palatial home, on June 17, 2013, was not a surprising next step for a man whose greatest pleasure appeared to be chortling at the reporters, fans, and even teammates who were unable-or at least reluctant-to recognize his true nature.

Given how badly he botched the finer points of Lloyd’s murder, Hernandez might easily be dismissed as a classic N.F.L. meathead: What kind of killer leaves the keys from his rented S.U.V. in the victim’s pocket, for example, or fails to turn off his home’s security cameras while parading around with the murder weapon? But, though precise planning does not appear to be his forte, Hernandez clearly has one valuable intellectual gift: an ability to identify weaker individuals and then bend them to his will.................
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THE REST OF THE STORY
 
ChampionTexan said:
AKA - The SteelB Dream Team
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Do they win?

Hernandez is where I draw the line. Hernandez got what he deserved since Massachusetts doesn't have the death penalty. He probably would've fried if this had happened in Texas.

I really don't care what players do on their personal time as long as they show up and play hard on Sunday's. You know the pre God'ell era.

Why do fans care about players moral character? This is just entertainment. do people look at actors/actresses in the same light?
 
DX-TEX said:
Greg A. Bedard ‏@GregABedard · 17m17 minutes ago
Hernandez sentenced to MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole, where he can probably hear Gillette Stadium on Sundays from the yard.
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lol
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Mollywhopper said:
Bizarre ...

[IMGWIDTHSIZE=500]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCpNs-SVIAA14f_.jpg[/IMGWIDTHSIZE]
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So the next time the Pats need a snowplow driver to clear the turf for a field goal attempt....
 
Jurors ‘shocked’ by defense tactic in Hernandez trial

By Maria CramerGlobe Staff April 15, 2015

FALL RIVER — After 10 weeks of testimony, more than 130 witnesses, and hundreds of pieces of evidence, the jurors in the trial of Aaron Hernandez on Wednesday revealed that one of the key factors that helped them convict the former NFL star of murder came in an admission made during the defense team’s closing argument.

“We were all shocked,” one juror said of the defense’s acknowledgment that Hernandez was in the North Attleborough industrial yard at the same time that Lloyd, 27, was shot to death.

The jurors, in an unusual press conference after the verdict Wednesday, said the admission helped corroborate the other evidence against Hernandez.

Prosecutors had steadily worked to build a circumstantial case, with no murder weapon or clear motive to bolster the first-degree-murder charge against the 25-year-old.

But during final statements, just before jurors began deliberations, the defense admitted that Hernandez was present at the crime scene — a strategy that legal specialists said could cut either way. If the defense lawyers were willing to acknowledge there was enough evidence to put Hernandez at the scene, the jurors might be open to the alternative theory that someone else had committed the murder.
View Story
Crucial points in the trial

The jury was, in a way, asked to get inside Aaron Hernandez’s head, according to legal specialists.

However, it was a gamble that did not pay off, said Martin Healy, the Massachusetts Bar Association’s chief legal counsel.

“It looks like it was more damaging than helpful to the defendant,” Healy said Wednesday. “I think what happened here is there were a number of circumstantial events that led the jury to their conclusions,” he said. “It wasn’t one single factor that they were able to hang their verdict on.”

It took about 35 hours of deliberations over seven days for the jury to reach a verdict, but the seven women and five men said they felt confident they made the right decision.

Their confidence only grew when Judge E. Susan Garsh informed the jury that Hernandez also faces murder charges in the 2012 shooting of two men in Boston. Garsh, who met privately with the jurors after the verdict, also told them about allegations that Hernandez shot his one-time friend, Alexander Bradley, in the face. Bradley testified during the trial, but was not allowed to mention the shooting. The jurors were kept unaware of the other allegations, which were not allowed as evidence during the trial, until Garsh told them.

“I think we can all stand here and say we made the right decision,” said jury forewoman Malessa Strachan.

All 12 jurors and three alternates gathered in the jury room in the Fall River Justice Center to discuss the case. It is rare for a jury to appear as a group after a verdict; the judge had told them the news media would be less likely to track them down at home for a comment on the high-profile case if they spoke at the courthouse.

None would discuss the deliberations, and most were reluctant to reveal what had motivated their decision.

But they said they were not swayed by the defense argument that it was Hernandez’s former friends and alleged coconspirators, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace, who killed Lloyd in a drug-fueled rage. Defense attorneys said Ortiz and Wallace, who were also charged with murder but will be tried separately, were PCP users.

Jurors said surveillance footage taken at the athlete’s North Attleborough home that showed him relaxing with Ortiz and Wallace in the hours after the murder made them skeptical of the defense theory.

One juror said a “mind-blowing” moment came when the jury learned that the serial number of a .22-caliber firearm found not far from where Lloyd was killed matched the number on a .22 purchased for Hernandez in Florida.

Juror Jon Carlson, a district manager from Attleboro, said he was influenced by Patriots owner Robert Kraft's testimony that in the days following Lloyd’s killing, Hernandez told him he hoped the time of the murder would be released to the public because it would show he was innocent. Kraft testified that Hernandez told him he was at a nightclub at the time.

“We still don’t know the exact time of Odin’s murder specifically, so I don’t know how Aaron would have that information two years ago,” Carlson said.

Still, the jurors could not unanimously decide that Hernandez acted with premeditation when he killed Lloyd. They did agree that he acted with extreme atrocity and cruelty, one of the legal standards required for a jury to convict a defendant of first-degree murder.

“The shots, there were six of them,” said juror Rosalie Oliver of Rehoboth. “That’s extreme.”

During the trial, jurors hid their emotions, even when grisly crime photos were shown and grief-stricken witnesses, including Lloyd’s girlfriend and mother, took the stand. But they said on Wednesday there were moments when they wanted to cry.

“You’re told be unemotional,” said Jennifer Rogers, a dental hygienist from New Bedford. “To sit there and hold back tears is hard.”

They had to deal with other emotions during the trial. They stifled laughter during awkward moments of defense cross-examination of police witnesses. They said they felt sorry for Kraft, who was obviously fighting a cold when he took the stand. The jurors also revealed that they had to fight boredom during some of the more plodding parts of the trial, specifically the hours of testimony by cellphone experts discussing texts between Hernandez and Lloyd.

“We definitely experienced information overload,” said one juror, Anthony Ferry.

“But it was important information,” said Kelly Dorsey, a Taunton resident. “Every bit of it. Whatever we got was important information and we used it to make a decision.”

On Wednesday morning, jurors who had been stoic for so long finally showed emotions in public. They laughed while joking about going to a bar after the verdict. One said the experience was so stressful she hoped she would never be seated on a jury again.

Sean Traverse, an assistant store manager from Norton, fought back tears as he described how the experience changed him.

“It makes you appreciate how quickly life can end,” he said, his voice growing hoarse. “How fleeting it can be.”
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Have to say I thought the defense 1) had the wrong guy closing and 2) should've stuck to "what ifs". Fee was a much more persuasive speaker for a jury, Sultan was better arguing to the Judge. They had tough facts, but didn't seem to do much of anything during the trial. Sultan won most of the pretrial battles, but I'd think that reduces any chance of success in appeal.

How appropriate for 16+ weeks every year when roar of the crowd at Gillette Field reaches inside the prison walls prompting Hernandez's fellow inmates to rag on him...

Hey, NFL, ball's coming your way! Oh wait, you can't catch it cuz you're in here with us criminals!

What does NFL stand for? Not for long. And that's how long that you had that $40 million!

Hey NFL college boy, did you ever go to class? Criminology, maybe. Like, how to leave evidence everywhere when you do murder?

Hey, NFL... how much did you pay those sorry ass lawyers you hired? Sheeeatt, I can do nothing for half of what they charged you.​

Year after year, bad joke after bad joke. Had it all, now you're nothing.
 
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