Aaron Hernandez Found Guilty In Murder Of Odin Lloyd

A Massachusetts jury of seven women and five men found Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end, guilty of murder in the first degree to conclude a nine-week trial in Bristol County Superior Court.

He will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.There will be an automatic appeal.

Hernandez, 25, was on trial for murdering Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old landscaper from Boston. He was also found guilty of unlawful firearm possession and unlawful ammunition possession after prosecutors presented a case based on circumstantial evidence due to a lack of eyewitnesses or a murder weapon.

Hernandez’s mother, Terri Hernandez, and his fiancée Shayanna Jenkins openly wept while the verdict was read; Hernandez was emotionless.

“It will be OK,” Hernandez mouthed to Jenkins, who was in the front row and embracing Terri Hernandez.

“Stay strong. Stay strong,” he said to Jenkins as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. The two have a two-year-old child together.

"The day I laid my son to rest I felt my heart stop beating. I felt like I wanted walk in a hole myself," Ursula Ward, Lloyd's mother, said in her victim impact statement.

"I know I am going to see him someday," she said with Hernandez, handcuffed, seated nearby.

"I forgive."

In closing arguments last Tuesday, Hernandez's attorney, James Sultan, acknowledged for the first time that Hernandez was at the murder scene, but only as a witness, insinuating that one of Hernandez's alleged accomplices - Ernest Wallace or Carlos Ortiz - shot Lloyd while high on phencyclidine, better known as PCP. Ortiz and Wallace both face murder charges, and are expected to be tried later this year.

"(Hernandez) was a 23-year-old kid," Sultan said. "He witnessed something, a shocking killing committed by someone he knew. He didn't know what to do, so he put one foot in front of the other. He's not charged with being an accessory after the fact."

Assistant District Attorney William McCauley countered that Hernandez was the cocky NFL star who pulled the trigger and that Hernandez controlled everyone, from the two men with him and Lloyd that night to his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, who allegedly spirited the murder weapon out of Hernandez's house the day after the homicide upon Hernandez's request during a phone call. McCauley asserted that Hernandez never thought anyone would believe he killed Lloyd, that Hernandez carried the gun — believed to be a .45-caliber Glock pistol — around his expansive house — less than a mile from the murder scene — like a "trophy" afterward.

Jenkins faces perjury charges related to the case, as well. She testified about taking money out of an ATM and giving it to Wallace after Hernandez requested she do so while at the police station after the murder.

Investigators pieced together an exhaustive case, using surveillance video images, cell phone records and communications Hernandez had with his alleged accomplices. They never retrieved the murder weapon and Massachusetts State Police Trooper Eric Benson, the lead investigator on the case, was never called to testify in court.

Hernandez's defense harped on Benson's absence and a lack of definitive evidence. Sultan acknowledged Hernandez may have been carrying a gun in surveillance images taken inside Hernandez's house following the murder.

"In sum, the investigation done in this case was incomplete, biased and inept," Sultan said in his closing argument. "That was not fair to Odin Lloyd. That was not fair to Aaron Hernandez. And it was not fair to you because it left you with a whole bunch of unanswered questions and not enough proof, and that's all you've got to work with."

In an attempt to fill in what the defense identified as "gaping holes," McCauley called 132 witnesses to testify, subpoenaing some, and immunizing others, like Hernandez's fiancée. Hernandez was supported by Jenkins and his mother, Terri, in the final days of the trial.

Lloyd's mother, Ursula Ward, attended the trial every day. She was accompanied by family and friends, as well as Shaneah Jenkins, the sister of Hernandez's fiancée. Shaneah Jenkins was dating Lloyd at the time of his murder. The sisters are now estranged.

There were 41 days of testimony and 437 exhibits introduced to the court during a case that commenced on Jan. 29, when the Patriots were headed toward the Super Bowl against Seattle. Patriots owner Robert Kraft told jurors of a "false alibi," as McCauley called it, given by Hernandez, the celebrated tight end whom Kraft's team drafted.

Hernandez, who was given a five-year contract extension worth up to $40 million by the Patriots in 2012, will next face another murder trial, this time for a double homicide in Boston. Prosecutors there asserted that Hernandez emptied a .38-caliber revolver into a car holding Safiro Furtado and Daniel Abreu in 2012 after Hernandez grew upset about a spilled drink at a nightclub. Hernandez was charged in that case last summer while jailed on the Lloyd allegations. He was linked to the killings after being investigated for murdering Lloyd.

The jury in the Lloyd case began deliberating on Tuesday at 3:03 p.m. The foreperson was Juror No. 5 — a middle-aged white woman with short brown hair. Three jurors had been excused for varying reasons throughout the trial.

Prosecutors alleged Hernandez orchestrated Lloyd's execution, and that Hernandez pulled the trigger, shooting Lloyd twice in the chest, once in the back, once in the forearm and once by the clavicle. One bullet pierced Lloyd's heart, and he was left to die in the dark of night. There were six gunshot wounds in all. Dr. William Zane, the medical examiner who performed Lloyd's autopsy on Cape Cod, testified that Lloyd died as a result of injuries to his heart, lungs, liver and a kidney.

Prosecutors told jurors that Hernandez grew upset with Lloyd after an incident at a nightclub called Rumor. Hernandez and Lloyd met through the Jenkins sisters after Lloyd attended a preseason Patriots game with them, and the two men were known to smoke marijuana together at Hernandez's house.

Lloyd was shot to death in the early morning hours of June 17, 2013. His body was discovered in the undeveloped section of an industrial park less than a mile from Hernandez's expansive house in North Attleborough, Mass. Surveillance video from a neighbor's house in the Dorchester section of Boston showed that Hernandez drove a Nissan Altima to Lloyd's house and picked Lloyd up before the murder.

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