Hernandez team claims victim was returning gunfire
Aaron Hernandez’s lawyers called a high-risk audible in the waning minutes of their case by suggesting one of two men he’s accused of gunning down may have been returning gunfire.
The wild defense theory, heard by jurors for the first time yesterday after 24 days of testimony and evidence, will likely figure in the defense’s closing argument for Hernandez’s acquittal this morning.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Locke indicated he will call on the defense first, give the jury a short break, and then invite prosecutors to make their final case for convicting the former New England Patriot of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder, three counts of armed assault with intent to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, carrying a firearm without a license and witness intimidation.
Hernandez, 27, is already serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for the 2013 execution of semipro football player Odin L. Lloyd. Jurors must decide whether the fallen NFL star pulled the trigger of a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver on July 16, 2012, when prosecutors say he stalked Daniel de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, to a traffic light in the South End because Abreu accidentally splashed a drink on him in Cure Lounge.
Three other men in the backseat of Abreu’s borrowed BMW survived. Team Hernandez rested yesterday afternoon on the testimony of Dr. Jamie Downs, a retired Alabama chief medical examiner whose professional opinion now fetches him $500 an hour.
Downs infuriated Mark Lee, chief of homicide investigations for the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office, by posing law clerk Jeohn Favors in a plaid shirt similar to the one Furtado died in and manipulating his right arm to appear as though Furtado had been pointing a gun at the Toyota 4Runner containing Hernandez and his driver, Alexander Bradley.
Furtado was shot twice in the head, but Downs said his investigation concluded the trajectory of a third bullet wound to his right shoulder would have required his upper arm be raised and extended when it was hit. Lee asked Downs if in all the materials he reviewed he found “one shred of evidence suggesting Mr. Furtado was armed with a gun ... and holding that gun out the window of the BMW on the morning of July 16, 2012?”
Downs answered that he developed a graphic showing Furtado pointing a gun at the Toyota at the request of the defense.
“You’d have to ask the defense why they wanted it created,” Downs said. “That’s their business — not mine.”