FALL RIVER, Mass. — The Aaron Hernandez jury began deliberating Tuesday after the former NFL star was portrayed as both a callous and calculating killer who considered himself invincible and an immature 23-year-old caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, during closing arguments at the former Patriots tight end’s murder trial.
Jurors were given similarly conflicting views of Bristol, Conn., residents Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, the two men with whom Hernandez is accused of killing Odin Lloyd in 2013. According to Hernandez’s defense attorneys, Wallace and Ortiz were crazed drug dealers, PCP fanatics liable to kill someone in a sudden, violent, drug-induced outburst. Prosecutors characterized the men as a pair of hometown friends over whom the former Patriots tight end — who was generous with his multimillion-dollar NFL salary — had complete control.
Bristol County Assistant District Attorney William McCauley gave the jury the most detailed play-by-play of Odin Lloyd’s 3 a.m. shooting that prosecutors have outlined since they brought charges against Hernandez two years ago.
Hernandez, he said, sat in the driver’s seat and fired the first shot. Lloyd had been pushed out of the car “by Wallace opening it from the front seat with his fingers,” and Ortiz pushing the door open from the back.
“He takes the first shot, right from the back,” McCauley said, and Lloyd, after getting hit in the right flank, “began to move away from the door.”
Defense attorneys had suggested in their closings that investigators were flawed and exhibited bias in their identification of a crime scene footprint — which was only matched to shoes that the state says Hernandez wore after the lead investigator provided the sole of the shoe to the footwear impression expert and asked him to go back and take another look.
“Who do we know is out of the car?” McCauley asked. “We know that this defendant’s out of the car. Gets out of the car and he plants his footprint right alongside those tire tracks.”
He then proceeded, McCauley said, to shoot Lloyd five more times as the victim tried to run away. The defense argued that prosecutors have provided “no earthly reason” that explains why Hernandez killed “his future brother-in-law,” the man who was dating his fiancee’s sister. Prosecutors pointed to video that shows, within a four-minute window, headlights entering and leaving the North Attleborough, Mass., industrial park where Lloyd was found dead. They said it was a calculated crime.
“Think of the efficiency of this killing,” McCauley said. “Odin Lloyd, down out of the car, one shot from inside the car, then out of the car — boom boom boom boom boom — then back in the car, then back out.”
“But something’s been left,” McCauley said. “Shell casings.”
Hernandez stole frequent glances at the clock in the back of the courtroom while the lead prosecutor urged jurors to connect the circumstantial but “strong” evidence in the case, to look for corroboration, and to find him guilty of first-degree murder.
Before McCauley asked the jury to connect the dots in the case, defense lawyer James Sultan highlighted the gaps in the state’s evidence. He told the jury that the only way Hernandez could be found guilty was if they approached the evidence with a “presumption of guilt” — the approach, he says, that police and prosecutors took during the investigation.
“Fill in the gaps of the case with guesswork, speculation, use your imagination like it’s a mystery,” Sultan said. “Not in a court of law. This isn’t a mystery show.”
Sultan accused prosecutors of deciding that Hernandez was guilty but failing, in testimony from 132 witnesses, to provide a motive. He characterized the government’s theories for why Hernandez would murder Lloyd as downright wacky.
He mentioned Hernandez’s former friend, who testified that in December, the former Patriots tight end was angry because Lloyd walked through his kitchen at a holiday party and did not say hello.
“Does the prosecution seriously expect you to believe that Aaron spent the next six months plotting to murder Odin Lloyd because he didn’t say hi?”
Sultan referenced the testimony from a friend of the victim’s who saw Hernandez staring at Lloyd at a Boston nightclub two nights before the slaying.
“Does the prosecution seriously expect you to believe that Aaron orchestrated a plan to murder Odin based on that testimony?”
After the nightclub, Hernandez and Lloyd went back to an apartment Hernandez rented in Franklin, Mass. They brought two girls back with them — one was Hernandez’s babysitter, who testified that he made a pass at her that night. Hernandez lived with fiancee in North Attleborough. The next morning, he texted her from Lloyd’s phone telling her that he was “bugging” and that he “f——- up” and showed Lloyd “the spot.”
“No motive?” McCauley said. “What causes somebody to go arm themselves? A look? Being disrespected? I take you to a club and you’re not grateful enough to be hanging out with me, you’re going to go hang out with your friends.”
McCauley characterized Hernandez as cocky and controlling of others in his life. He listed each of the people with whom Hernandez was close and said the former Patriots tight end was “in charge” of them.
He reminded jurors that the babysitter only ended up at the Franklin apartment after Hernandez told her that he would give her and her friend a ride back to her car parked a few blocks away in Boston — but instead got on the highway and drove them to the apartment. McCauley asked jurors to consider Hernandez’s attitude with the babysitter that night.
“‘Yeah, we’ll give you a ride to the car.’ Uh-uh. No ride to the car.” McCauley said. ‘Doesn’t that sound remarkably similar to the pickup of Odin Lloyd, and then the long drive that brings him to Corliss Landing.”
Corliss Landing, the industrial area in North Attleborough where Lloyd was found dead, is less than a mile from the $1.3 million home where Hernandez lived with his fiancee and their baby daughter.
Hernandez texted Lloyd hours before the victim was picked up in Boston that night telling him that he wanted to “step for a little.” Defense say the text was “benign and innocuous” because the two men shared a passion for marijuana and used to smoke together.
“I think we can all agree it didn’t mean to go to a vacant field in North Attleborough to ‘step for a little bit,’” McCauley said, reminding the jury that Jenkins used to allow Hernandez to smoke in their home.
“Did he make all the right decisions? No,” Sultan said. “He was a 23-year-old kid who witnessed something shocking — a killing committed by somebody he knew. He really didn’t know what to do so he just put one foot in front of the other.”
Sultan reminded jurors that they cannot find Hernandez guilty of accessory after the fact to murder, even if they wanted to, because prosecutors have not charged him with that offense. He suggested that Wallace or Ortiz, not Hernandez, carried a gun into the home after the slaying. Referencing surveillance footage that the state says shows Hernandez holding the .45 caliber Glock used to kill Lloyd, Sultan said: “Did he arm himself, protect himself after what he just saw at Corliss Landing? Did he take the murder weapon away from Wallace or Ortiz so that no one else would get hurt?”
During the trial, McCauley played two hours of surveillance video that shows Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz in the home the morning after the slaying, waking up, moving around the house, and going for a swim in the backyard pool. In one clip, Hernandez hands his baby daughter to Wallace to hold.
“This defendant has his eight-month-old infant and is handing his child, his little girl, to the guy they want to suggest is the crazy man who killed Odin Lloyd a number of hours before,” McCauley said. “They’re hanging out. While the body of Odin Lloyd is now entering those initial stages of decomposition out at the field in Corliss Landing? They’re in the pool.”
He painted an image of Hernandez as a professional athlete who believed he could get away with murder, and reminded jurors that when Hernandez first went to the North Attleborough police station, he lay down on the floor “because he’s Aaron Hernandez.”
“Who would, after a homicide, be walking around with a gun in his hand like it was a trophy of some sort?” McCauley asked, referring to the home surveillance footage from minutes after the crime. “You know who would, Aaron Hernandez would. ‘Cause guess what. No one would ever believe it, right?”
Prosecutors argue that Hernandez acted superior to those around him. He had a level of celebrity status in the region as a key member of the Patriots dynamic offense. That athletic career, defense attorneys counter, caused the state to target him as soon as they learned he knew the victim.
“Apart from sheer ineptness, the investigation was infected with bias,” Sultan said. “The police and prosecutors decided at the beginning that Aaron was guilty and they sought to come up with evidence to support that conclusion.”
Sultan reminded jurors that authorities never developed a DNA profile for Wallace. He said they never tested a human hair found on a white towel at the crime scene. They never tested a piece of chewed blue bubble gum they found in a dumpster stuck to a shell casing. He held up a photo of the shell casing attached to a piece of blue bubble gum. The shell casing, on which Hernandez’s DNA was identified, was contaminated, defense argues, because it had come into contact with the gum Hernandez chewed. Both items were found in the car Hernandez was rented the night of Lloyd’s death.
“They’ve relied on this poorly to try and convict someone of murder. They would do whatever it took to accomplish their goal,” Sultan said. “That’s not science, it’s scary, and it’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Hernandez is accused of murder and two illegal firearms charges. Even if he is acquitted on all counts, he will return to the Massachusetts jail, where he is being held pending trial on double murder charges in a 2012 drive-by shooting in Boston. Prosecutors had said that they were exploring Lloyd’s knowledge of the Boston double homicide as a possible motive, but they were not allowed to mention those charges at trial
