http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2015/04/15/verdict-reached-aaron-hernandez-murder-trial/vAKB6tdDIakFmKn1IuShhP/story.htmlBy Nik DeCosta-Klipa @NikDeCostaKlipa
Boston.com Staff | 04.15.15 | 10:16 AM
Former Patriots star Aaron Hernandez has been convicted on all counts in the killing of Odin Lloyd, including first-degree murder.
Lloyd was killed in June 2013. The verdict comes after jurors heard testimony from 135 total witnesses—132 called by the prosecution—in the 10-week long case.
Hernandez was also found guilty of two weapons charges. Sentencing is set to begin at 10:50 a.m.
Prosecutors alleged that Hernandez and co-defendants Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace drove Lloyd to a North Attleboro industrial park, where they shot and killed him around 3:25 a.m.
Ortiz and Wallace have both pleaded not guilty and will be tried separately.
Hernandez stood as he heard the verdict, and then sat down upon hearing the first guilty verdict. He did not show much emotion. His fiancée Shayanna Jenkins and his mother Terri Hernandez held each other and wept.
During the trial, prosecutors showed surveillance video of Hernandez carrying a semi-automatic pistol a few minutes after the murder. A Glock representative testified that it was similar to the model used to kill Lloyd.
Prosecutors never recovered a murder weapon, but police said Lloyd was killed with a .45-caliber Glock.
The prosecution said that Hernandez told his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, to dispose of the murder weapon the day after Lloyd’s body was found. Jenkins testified Hernandez told her to remove a box—which she said weighed 30 pounds and smelled like marijuana—from their basement. She said that she discarded the box in a “random” dumpster, but couldn’t remember where.
Later, a former friend of Hernandez testified that the ex-NFL player had a basement safe that contained a semi-automatic gun, marijuana and cash. For the first time in the trial, the defense acknowledged during closing statements that Hernandez did have a gun in the home security footage shown in court.
They also admitted in closing that he was present at the crime scene and witnessed the murder.
“He was a 23-year-old kid, who witnessed something, a shocking killing committed by someone he knew,” Hernandez’s lawyer James Sultan said in his closing statement. “He didn’t know what to do.”
Yet multiple surveillance videos and fingerprint evidence indicated Hernandez was the driver of the car that took Lloyd from his Dorchester home to the industrial park where he was murdered. Home surveillance footage showed Hernandez, Ortiz, and Wallace returning to the former Patriot’s nearby home together minutes after the police say the killing occurred.
Prosecutors struggled to illustrate a clear motive, only pointing to witness testimony that Hernandez appeared angry with Lloyd at a club two nights before the murder, and that in another incident Hernandez remarked that Lloyd had acted “rude” while visiting the former Patriot’s home.
Hernandez’s lawyers repeatedly asking jurors why Hernandez would ever kill his friend and soon-to-be-brother-in-law.
Hernandez still faces two murder charges for a South Boston drive-by double-murder in 2012.
