Other Aaron Hernandez - Beat the Rap Sheet but not the Bed Sheet

[Exe Gesis]

Hernandez fiancee: I asked him if he killed Odin, he said no, that was it
Posted by Michael David Smith on March 27, 2015, 11:20 AM EDT

AP
Aaron Hernandez’s fiancee testified in court today that he told her he did not murder their friend Odin Lloyd.

Shayanna Jenkins, who prosecutors say helped Hernandez get rid of evidence after Lloyd was shot and killed, testified in front of a judge — but not in front of the jurors — and said that Hernandez said that she asked her fiance directly whether he murdered Lloyd. He told her that he didn’t, and she didn’t press the matter.

“When Aaron got back from the police station, when I had found out that Odin was murdered, I asked him if he did it and he said no. That was the extent of our conversation,” she said.

Jenkins was also asked about a text message from Hernandez in which he wrote, “Go in back of the screen in movie room when u get home an there is the box.” Prosecutors allege that was Hernandez telling Jenkins where he had hidden the murder weapon and that she should get rid of it before police searched the house. Jenkins admits that she took a box from the home and threw it in a dumpster after that, but she says that was just a coincidence and that the text wasn’t an instruction for her to do so.

According to Michele Steele of ESPN, Jenkins mouthed “I love you” to Hernandez as she walked out of the courtroom.

 

[WhyAlwaysMe]

http://deadspin.com/robert-kraft-ta...ource=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[Exe Gesis]

Kraft obviously must be half-asleep most of the time.....denying spygate, denying deflategate, and now testifying he believed Hernandez told him the truth that he had an alibi, and feeling the whole organization "duped" when it came out Hernandez got arrested.

Kraft carrying on making blanket claims of innocence regarding the Patriots cheating....now it makes sense why he would think that.

---------

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...ne-evidence/ddjBanLCjDbliX2SKeYuLK/story.html


By Travis Andersen
Globe Staff March 31, 2015


FALL RIVER — New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft testified Tuesday that Aaron Hernandez, his former star tight end, insisted during a private conversation at the team facility that he did not kill Odin L. Lloyd.

“I understood there was an incident that had transpired and I wanted to know whether he was involved,” said Kraft, who testified in Hernandez’s murder trial in Bristol Superior Court. “He said he was not involved, that he was innocent.”

Kraft said they spoke in an office at Gillette Stadium on the morning of June 19, 2013, as a crush of reporters waited in the parking lots and helicopters circled the area.

Police had searched Hernandez’s North Attleborough home the night before, prompting a media firestorm. But the following morning, before many details of Lloyd’s death were publicized, Hernandez told Kraft he had an alibi.

He said “he hoped that the time of the incident became public, because he was at a club on that night,” Kraft testified. Defense lawyers objected when prosecutor William McCauley asked if Hernandez explained how he knew the time of the murder. Judge E. Susan Garsh sustained the objection.

• What Kraft has said about the case
• Recap of testimony
• 2013: Patriots were ‘duped’
• Holes seen in Patriots’ path

Hernandez, 25, has pleaded not guilty to murder and weapons charges in the slaying of Lloyd, 27, of Dorchester, who was shot to death early on June 17, 2013, in an industrial park near the athlete’s residence.

The Patriots released Hernandez after his arrest nine days later, and Kraft initially appeared blindsided, telling reporters the following month that if the allegations were true, “our whole organization has been duped.”

On Tuesday, Kraft told defense lawyer Michael Fee that he never had any problems with Hernandez, saying the player was always respectful at Gillette. Hernandez embraced Kraft after their conversation, and “he would always hug and kiss me” when they saw one another, the owner testified.

“Aaron told you he had nothing to do with this, isn’t that right?” Fee asked.

“He said he was innocent,” said Kraft, who also testified that Hernandez said he and Lloyd socialized together, and that Lloyd dated the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee.

Kraft was followed on the witness stand by Mark Briggs, the team’s head of security, who testified that Hernandez also denied any involvement in the murder when they spoke.

Briggs said he asked Hernandez why he “lawyered up,” prompting another defense objection that Garsh sustained. She reminded jurors that all citizens have the right to counsel and do not have to speak to investigators.

Briggs said Hernandez maintained that he and Lloyd had gone to a club and then went their separate ways, when Hernandez left with friends and gave Lloyd the keys to a vehicle.

“He swore on his baby’s life that he was telling the truth,” Briggs said.

Hernandez and Lloyd were at a Boston club two nights before the murder and left together, driving with two women to a separate apartment that Hernandez leased in Franklin, according to prosecutors. Lloyd dropped Hernandez at his home the following morning, on June 15, and drove off in a vehicle that Hernandez had rented, prosecutors say.

Then on June 17 around 2:30 a.m., Hernandez and two accomplices allegedly picked Lloyd up in Dorchester and drove him to the industrial park where he was killed.

Fee asked Briggs if Hernandez told him Lloyd “was like family,” and Briggs said that he had. He also conceded that Hernandez did not specify the time when he last saw Lloyd.

“You’re not sure of when Aaron last saw Odin Lloyd, are you?” Fee asked.

“No,” Briggs said, later adding that he asked Hernandez to leave Gillette, and Hernandez complied and shook his hand.

“You asked him to leave the stadium because his presence there was bad for business, isn’t that right?” Fee asked.

“That’s correct,” Briggs said.

Prosecutors could rest their case Thursday and are expected to call Alexander Bradley, a former friend of Hernandez, on Wednesday. Bradley is jailed in Connecticut on unrelated gun charges and alleges in a pending lawsuit that Hernandez shot him in Florida in February 2013.

Garsh has barred Bradley from mentioning that incident on the stand, but he can testify that Hernandez had access to a firearm.

Defense lawyers filed a motion Monday asking Garsh to bar Bradley from testifying altogether, calling him “a wild card who is not subject to anyone’s control and may well ignore the court’s instructions” and possibly force a mistrial.

Garsh may hear arguments on the matter out of the jury’s presence Wednesday morning.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Aaron Hernandez knew that beating NFL drug tests is easy
Posted by Michael David Smith on April 5, 2015, 9:55 AM EDT

AP
Aaron Hernandez is an accused murderer, which makes the accusation that he was also a habitual marijuana smoker seem so trivial that it’s barely worth mentioning. But the testimony in Hernandez’s murder trial indicates that Hernandez was a regular pot smoker, and that he managed to smoke pot throughout his NFL career without ever failing an NFL drug test. And that raises a question: How did Hernandez beat the tests?

The answer is, fairly easily.

The NFL’s drug-testing program is really two programs: There’s the program for testing for substances of abuse and the program for testing for performance-enhancing drugs. The PED testing is stringent: Players are subject to unannounced testing all year long, and most players are tested several times over the course of a year. If you’re using PEDs in the NFL and you’re not getting caught, you have to be doing something pretty sophisticated to beat the tests.

But most players are only tested for substances of abuse once a year, before the season starts, and they knew the approximate time of their testing. As a source who was formerly affiliated with the NFL’s testing program told Ben Volin of the Boston Globe, Hernandez probably just stopped smoking pot when the testing was coming and then started up again as soon as he had submitted a sample.

“The most logical conclusion is he stopped smoking in June, passed his test in July, then smoked all he wanted for 11 months of the year,” the source said.

In other words, Hernandez knew that it’s easy to beat the NFL’s tests for substances of abuse: Stop using in time for drugs to clear your system, pass your one annual test, then start using again as soon as you’ve submitted your clean sample. Then you’re good to go until the next year, when you’ll have to get clean again, briefly, just until you’ve submitted your annual clean sample. The only exception is that players who are in the substance-abuse program are subject to additional testing. But Hernandez was able to avoid detection well enough to keep himself out of the program.

The NFL probably only tested Hernandez for marijuana four times: Once at the Combine before he was drafted and once during each of the three offseasons of his NFL career. Hernandez admitted before he was drafted that he had used marijuana while playing at Florida, but if he passed all of those NFL-mandated tests, he was free to smoke all he wanted the rest of the time, as long as he could get it out of his system in time to beat the next year’s test. Hernandez was probably tested for PEDs many times during his career, and those samples probably would have come up positive for marijuana if they had been tested for marijuana, but the PED test is separate from the marijuana test.

So if you’re an NFL player using recreational drugs, beating tests is easy, as long as you’re able to stop long enough to get the drugs out of your system. The policy is designed to catch those who have a drug problem so serious that they can’t or won’t stop even when they know the test is coming. Everyone else is free to use for most of the year.

 

[nobbyiscool]

Josh Gordon already looks like a complete idiot. Stories like that don't help his cause.

Still, continuing to ban a substance that is legal in a number of US states seems even more idiotic to me.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Hernandez defense relies on bizarre PCP argument
Posted by Mike Florio on April 7, 2015, 7:14 AM EDT

AP
The case-in-chief presented by the prosecution in the first Aaron Hernandez murder case included 131 witnesses. The first of only three witnesses presented by Hernandez showed that his lawyers will put plenty of eggs into a fairly bizarre basket.

At closing argument, Hernandez’s lawyers will attempt to show that reasonable doubt as to his guilt exists because it’s possible that Carlos Ortiz and/or Ernest Wallace killed Odin Lloyd in a fit of rage induced by ingestion of PCP.

Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports explains why the testimony of Dr. David Greenblatt possibly did more harm than good, thanks to a skillful cross examination that made the effort to create reasonable doubt seem like spitballs of speculation aimed at sticking to the walls of the jury room, giving those inclined to acquit Hernandez a plausible basis for doing so. Greenblatt admitted that he doesn’t know if Wallace and/or Ortiz had taken PCP and that it would be impossible to know it without a toxicology report (or without testimony from Wallace and/or Ortiz that they had taken PCP). Greenblatt also admitted that it would be impossible to know if they’d suffered PCP-induced psychosis that resulted in the shooting of Lloyd.

Greenblatt also admitted that drinking alcohol can lead to violent acts, which as Wetzel notes dovetails with testimony from Hernandez’s fiancée that Hernandez was drunk that night.

The decision to call Greenblatt shows that Hernandez’s lawyers feel compelled to introduce an alternative explanation for a mountain of circumstantial evidence that points to Hernandez committing the murder personally or being sufficiently involved in a joint venture to be culpable. If the only alternative explanation is that the other two men in the car with Hernandez and Lloyd killed Lloyd in a fit of PCP-related psychosis without any evidence that the two men had taken PCP, Hernandez’s lawyers would have been better off ignoring that angle and harping at closing arguments on the notion that there’s still no murder weapon and no proof of a motive to kill Lloyd, even though proof of motive isn’t technically required.

Thanks to Greenblatt’s testimony, the jury may now be even more inclined to convict Hernandez without a specific motive, embracing the notion that Hernandez killed Lloyd in a fit of drunken rage — especially if the jurors apply common sense to undisputed evidence that Hernandez instructed his fiancée to get rid of a mystery box not by throwing it in the trash at their home but by throwing it in some random dumpster.

 

[dart]

He was there, but he didn't do it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-did-not-commit-murder-his-defense-team-says/

 

[Exe Gesis]

They should put Lawrence Phillips and Aaron Hernandez in the same cell.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Hernandez jury enters fifth day of deliberations
Posted by Mike Florio on April 14, 2015, 8:11 AM EDT

AP
No news was no news on Monday from the Aaron Hernandez trial, with the jury not reaching a verdict in the fifth full day of deliberations.

Actually, there was some news. The jurors want smoke breaks. And they’ll get smoke breaks. Which could help keep any tensions under control.

Per the Associated Press, the jury has deliberated more than 27 hours since last Tuesday afternoon. Hernandez faces first- and second-degree murder charges in connection with the death of Odin Lloyd, along with a firearms and ammunition charges.

The longer the process takes, the greater the likelihood of a hung jury. But the first hint of a problem has yet to emerge — the jury asking the judge via a note, “What happens if we can’t make a decision?”

 

[Starburns_]

Josh Gordon already looks like a complete idiot. Stories like that don't help his cause.

Still, continuing to ban a substance that is legal in a number of US states seems even more idiotic to me.

Josh Gordon was the first thing I thought of too when reading that. How can someone be so dumb as to get caught when they know basically when they're going to be tested?

Shows how Manziel ended up with such a problem despite no positive test too.

 

[dart]

But the first hint of a problem has yet to emerge — the jury asking the judge via a note, “What happens if we can’t make a decision?”

Then we're headed into overtime! yeah boi!

Found a bit more info this morning:

"The 12 jurors must reach a unanimous verdict. In addition to the murder charge, the jurors are also deciding whether to convict Hernandez of weapon and ammunition possession charges.
They have sent several notes, none related to the murder charge. They have asked for clarification on the possession charges, for permission to take a morning smoke break and for a list of the 439 exhibits in the case."

http://www.wcvb.com/news/jurors-to-deliberate-for-6th-day-in-aaron-hernandez-trial/32355626

So that "what happens if we can't decide?" note might not be related to the murder charge.

 

[dart]

Josh Gordon was the first thing I thought of too when reading that. How can someone be so dumb as to get caught when they know basically when they're going to be tested?

Hash Gordon!

Shows how Manziel ended up with such a problem despite no positive test too.

Really interesting to see what happens with Manziel, hope the guy gets his shiz together, you'd have to think though if it doesn't work out with the Browns there's probably already a line drawn through his name at a lot of teams in the NFL, there are some that will take a chance, but not many.

Maybe I'm a bit removed from it here in aus, but I thought him going to rehab would be bigger news, maybe it has been in Cleveland, his situation has a touch of the Ben Cousinses about it - that was unavoidable here in Perth (and I guess Melbourne), but Manziel I haven't seen blanket coverage, maybe the media are trying their best to give him a chance to sort himself out without the added pressure of "you sneeze, we report it".

 

[Starburns_]

Really interesting to see what happens with Manziel, hope the guy gets his shiz together, you'd have to think though if it doesn't work out with the Browns there's probably already a line drawn through his name at a lot of teams in the NFL, there are some that will take a chance, but not many.

Jerry will even if no one else does.

Maybe I'm a bit removed from it here in aus, but I thought him going to rehab would be bigger news, maybe it has been in Cleveland, his situation has a touch of the Ben Cousinses about it - that was unavoidable here in Perth (and I guess Melbourne), but Manziel I haven't seen blanket coverage, maybe the media are trying their best to give him a chance to sort himself out without the added pressure of "you sneeze, we report it".

It does seem like they've decided to leave him alone for the most part which is interesting. Then again, they're getting plenty of mileage out of the draft right now, we'll see what happens come training camp if the Browns don't add Bradford, Mariota, or any other QB to their roster.

 

[dart]

Jerry will even if no one else does..

those cwazy cowboys!

It does seem like they've decided to leave him alone for the most part which is interesting. Then again, they're getting plenty of mileage out of the draft right now, we'll see what happens come training camp if the Browns don't add Bradford, Mariota, or any other QB to their roster.

I think part of it might be that he's been brave enough to admit his mistakes or waywardness (by going to rehab, that's a huge step) and that's something that they tend to respect in America.

Perhaps that's where the situation really differs from Ben Cousins, since he spent a lot of time denying that there was even a problem, even when it was so outrageously obvious, so the media were happy to feast on that.

Anyways, let's get back to Hernandez, anyone willing to predict a score?

I'm going with:

Weapons Charges - Guilty
Ammunition Possession Charges - Guilty

Moyder charge - Double overtime no scores from either team, it's a TIE!

Whatever happens he's still in jail anyways, he's got a couple more moyders to talk about before this is done.

 

[Starburns_]

I think part of it might be that he's been brave enough to admit his mistakes or waywardness (by going to rehab, that's a huge step) and that's something that they tend to respect in America.

Perhaps that's where the situation really differs from Ben Cousins, since he spent a lot of time denying that there was even a problem, even when it was so outrageously obvious, so the media were happy to feast on that.

True about the cultural differences, though the entertainment media sure love it when an entertainer checks into rehab, must be different within the NFL media circles.

Cousins keeps getting arrested, that's why we're hearing about him so much again.

Anyways, let's get back to Hernandez, anyone willing to predict a score?

I'm going with:

Weapons Charges - Guilty
Ammunition Possession Charges - Guilty

Moyder charge - Double overtime no scores from either team, it's a TIE!

Whatever happens he's still in jail anyways, he's got a couple more moyders to talk about before this is done.

Guilty on all charges. Any doubt here falls far short of 'reasonable' levels.

 

[Damon_3388]

 

[Carl Hooper]

He's done

 

[twarby]

 

[juice t]

Does this mean we can get our cap space back now

 

[dart]

i can't quite believe it.

life without possibility of parole, BUH BOW.

and then maybe more on top of that with the other trial.

This article suggests his defence team kicked a bit of an own goal by admitting he was there:

http://deadspin.com/jurors-say-aaron-hernandezs-defense-was-baffling-1697994540

In football terms, they did a jim marshall:

 

[Exe Gesis]

Furtado, Abreu families await justice in second Hernandez trial
Posted by Mike Florio on April 16, 2015, 8:56 AM EDT

AP
Now that a Bristol County, Massachusetts jury has convicted former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez of first-degree murder in connection with the death of Odin Lloyd in June 2013, a Suffolk County, Massachusetts jury can focus on whether Hernandez killed Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu eleven months earlier.

Via the Boston Globe, the families of Furtado and Abreu held a press conference Wednesday night as a reminder that, while justice has been done for Lloyd, the process is far from complete for Hernandez’s other alleged victims.

“They know that their day is coming,” said attorney William T. Kennedy, who represents the families in a civil lawsuit previously filed against Hernandez. “They’re prepared to do what is necessary to see that justice is done for their two sons. . . . The fact that they’re going to have to now confront again the loss of their two sons is not an easy task for them to take, but it is something that they are committed to seeing is done.”

Prosecutors claim that Hernandez fired five shots into a car carrying Abreu, Furtado, and another man after Abreu bumped into Hernandez in a club in Boston’s South End, causing Hernandez to spill a drink. A trial date is expected to be selected “in the coming days.”

“Justice in America is very strong,” said Safiro Furtado’s father, Salvador. “I believe in justice in America.”

Justice could be easier to obtain in the next trial, given that the second case against Hernandez includes a murder weapon, eyewitness accounts, and clear evidence of a motive.

 

[dart]

Abreu bumped into Hernandez in a club in Boston’s South End, causing Hernandez to spill a drink


....clear evidence of a motive.

the world is messed up.

 

[kaiserchief13]

Hernandez is seriously insane. How could he think he would get away with any of the murders? Did he really think because he's a pro athlete he can just do whatever he wants?

 

[Exe Gesis]

Hernandez is seriously insane. How could he think he would get away with any of the murders? Did he really think because he's a pro athlete he can just do whatever he wants?

A guy accidentally bumps into him, causing a drink to spill.....so later, naturally fire five bullets into their car, killing two people.

 

[Starburns_]

If only he had 'outlaw bloodlines', the Pats could've steered clear of this entire mess.