Aaron Hernandez is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
It might explain why his defense appears ready to take a blowtorch to anything in its path, as the former New England Patriot star stands trial for a separate double murder over the 2012 killing of two Cape Verdean immigrants.
Prosecutors charge Hernandez murdered Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in a drive-by shooting after growing enraged because Abreu spilled a drink on him in a nightclub in Boston’s Theatre District. Hernandez, now 27, faces additional, but essentially meaningless, life-without-parole sentences if convicted. The state is prosecuting the case in an effort to find justice for the victims and their families.
During his hour-long opening statement Wednesday, defense attorney Jose Baez made it clear this case would not come easily or quietly for the state. He went after everyone, everything and all angles of the prosecution’s case. That included:
• Accusing the Boston Police of repeated acts of both gross misconduct and general negligence in the investigation, losing or ignoring critical evidence.
“Corruption at its inception,” Baez said.
• Further accusing the Boston Police of not caring about the case at all when it assumed the victims were just anonymous street criminals and going all in only when they believed they could link it to Hernandez.
“No citizen should be treated that way,” Baez said, sympathizing that the victims deserved a better effort.
• Theorizing that if the police didn’t destroy surveillance video from Cure Lounge that might clear Hernandez of the charges, then the nightclub might have done it itself in an effort to hide drug sales taking place on the premises.
• Declaring the Suffolk County district attorney’s office cared about this case only because it thought it would be good publicity to convict a famous athlete who had already been charged with a separate murder.
“We have an NFL football player, the cameras are here,” Baez said, motioning to the media assembled in the ninth-floor courtroom here. “That’s what this is about.”
• Arguing that the state was so desperate to finger Hernandez it “made a deal with the devil” – in this case Alexander Bradley, the prosecution’s star witness. Bradley is a convicted drug dealer who is serving time in Connecticut for shooting up a nightclub in Hartford. Baez says the violent Bradley, not Hernandez, is the gunman. The state, while acknowledging Bradley is a bad guy, contend he was just the wheelman that night. Baez argued Bradley never should have received immunity for his testimony.
“He’ll get out real soon, courtesy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Baez said.
Baez even dismissed the allegation that Hernandez shot Bradley in the eye in 2013 after a night out at a South Florida strip club, saying it was another drug dealer who did that to Bradley and he can prove it. It certainly, Baez said, wasn’t Hernandez trying to silence a potential witness, as the state alleges.
• While Baez claimed it was unfortunate that, in his opinion, Furtado and Abreu didn’t get a full investigation from the police, he wasn’t kind to the deceased either. He didn’t hesitate to accuse Furtado of being involved in drug trades with Bradley. Baez said that was Bradley’s motive for killing them, not the “absurd” idea that Hernandez would murder two people over a spilled drink.
via Yahoo!Sports