COULD CASE GO UP IN SMOKE?
Ex-Patriot eyes potential pot defense
Aaron Hernandez’s lawyers are looking at a potential pot defense — a maneuver that would use his constant marijuana smoking as a last-ditch tactic to get the fallen New England Patriot out of two first-degree murder charges.
Buried in a list of potential witnesses are two “unknown” experts who the former tight end’s attorneys may call. One expert may “discuss marijuana use in the NFL.” Another could address “the medical and psychological impacts for individuals who ingest marijuana” and whether there is any correlation between pot use and violence.
Together, those experts could be used in a Hail Mary maneuver to try to erase the mental state needed to convict Hernandez of two counts of first-degree murder.
“Sometimes these experts get on the stand and say that based on their testing and review of the evidence that they don’t believe the defendant had the mental ability to form an intent to kill,” said Robert Sheketoff, a longtime criminal defense attorney who is not involved in the case. “It’s not a full defense, but it negates something the commonwealth has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Hernandez’ s marijuana use was well- chronicled during his first murder trial, in which he was convicted of killing former semipro football player Odin L. Lloyd. It came out that Lloyd was his source of pot, and that the former Patriot would at times smoke an ounce of weed in a day.
His love for marijuana became part of his defense. Hernandez’s attorneys painted him and Lloyd as smoke buddies and questioned why he would want to shoot and kill the source of his goods.
Michael Fee, a former Hernandez defense attorney, called Lloyd the “blunt master.”
But a pot defense would likely take on a very different form if Jose Baez and Hernandez’s new defense team try to employ it. They would likely try to use his excessive weed use to show that he had a diminished capacity when Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, were allegedly gunned down in a roadway drive-by in the early morning hours of July 16, 2012.
“At that point, if you are using this tactic, you are probably trying to get it down to seconddegree murder or manslaughter,” said Phil Tracy, a criminal defense attorney not involved in the case. “You would try to say that repeated and prolonged use of marijuana had an effect on his brain so he couldn’t form clear intent to commit first-degree murder.”
There would likely be many defenses employed before then. Hernandez’s attorneys will likely seize on the fact that prosecutors don’t have forensic evidence and that the key eyewitness — Alexander Bradley — has a checkered past that could render him unreliable.
It has even been insinuated that they could try to point the finger at Bradley — a convicted criminal who has been granted immunity for his testimony.
But if it all falls apart and mitigation seems more likely than exoneration, the pot defense could take center stage.