Aaron Hernandez may have copped a life sentence for first degree murder, but there are complexities around the remaining cases against him, according to a top criminal lawyer.
Top Boston defense lawyer Jeffrey Denner was reported by the Boston Globe talking about the Hernandez cases, noting that the former New England Patriots star’s conviction “may well not stand” and much of where his future lies will be the result of the Boston case for the killing of two other men.
But Hernandez is entitled to an appeal before the state’s highest court, and there are “always complex issues that arise in first-degree murder convictions,” said Jeffrey Denner, a prominent Boston defense lawyer.
He said Hernandez’s legal team in the Boston case will have to assume the prior conviction for the killing of Odin Lloyd “may well not stand, and what really is standing between Hernandez and liberty is going to be the result of the Boston case,” Denner said.
There are key differences in the cases, Mr Denner said.
In Bristol County, prosecutors lacked a murder weapon or an eyewitness who could testify about Lloyd’s slaying in June 2013 in an industrial park near Hernandez’s North Attleborough home. But the government won a conviction largely on the strength of phone records, video surveillance, and forensic evidence that tied Hernandez to the killing.
In the second case, by contrast, Suffolk County prosecutors have the .38 caliber gun that Hernandez allegedly used in the fatal drive-by shootings of Daniel Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, in July 2012 in Boston’s South End.
There is also the possibility of eyewitnesses in the Boston case. Friends who were in a car with Abreu and Furtado survived the shooting, and Alexander Bradley, a former associate of Hernandez who testified against him in the Bristol County murder case, was with Hernandez when he allegedly opened fire on the vehicle in Boston, court records show.
A spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley declined to say whether Bradley or any of the survivors would testify against Hernandez, though Conley described Bradley as a witness after Hernandez’s arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court in May 2014. Bradley alleges in a lawsuit that Hernandez shot him in the face in Florida in 2013. He is now jailed in Connecticut on unrelated charges. A lawyer for Bradley did not return messages seeking his comment.
Source: Boston Globe
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