Lawyer: Treatment of Hernandez family by DOC ‘disgraceful’
Judge orders preservation of evidence
NEW BEDFORD — Aaron Hernandez’s family and attorneys have no idea what’s in the notes the former New England Patriot wrote before he took his own life in a state prison, according to a member of his estate’s legal team who successfully convinced a judge to force prison officials to preserve evidence related to the suicide.
“It’s disgraceful that these public officials failed to show any decency to the family members of Aaron Hernandez,” George Leontire, an attorney now representing Hernandez’s estate, said after a hearing at Bristol County Superior Court yesterday, adding: “We’ve been told none of the particulars, and someone has to answer for how this family was treated.”
Justice Thomas McGuire Jr. eventually ordered the state to preserve evidence surrounding Hernandez’s suicide.
The emergency suit was brought in anticipation of a lawsuit against the Department of Correction and other state officials.
“The cognizable action is an action for negligent supervision or negligence with respect to the care and custody of Mr. Hernandez while he was incarcerated,” Leontire said.
DOC attorney Mary Murray argued that her department was still investigating the death, that it would cooperate with Hernandez’s attorneys, and that any insinuation regarding the destruction of evidence was speculative.
Leontire then went on the offensive.
“It’s all well and good to stand before the court and say they will cooperate,” Leontire said, pointing at Murray. “But at the time it was most important — after this man’s death — there was not a phone call, not an email, not a message to anyone about this man’s death.”
He said Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez learned about the lurid details of the scene surrounding her fiancee’s death in the media and on Twitter.
“They should have talked to the family the night he died, and they should have told them about suicide notes before they had to read it in the newspaper,” Leontire said, his voice booming off the walls of the courtroom.
Hernandez hanged himself early Wednesday morning at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, where he was serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Dorchester semi-pro football player Odin L. Lloyd. He had been acquitted last week of a 2012 double-murder in Boston.
McGuire ordered the DOC to “preserve all evidence in their possession, custody or control relating to the time, cause and means of death of Aaron Hernandez.”
Before the order was issued, Leontire told a group of reporters that he, his team, and Hernandez’s family were sick of being left in the dark.
“Why wouldn’t you produce the notes?” Leontire said. ‘Why would you leave these people in agony as to what those notes say?”
Jenkins-Hernandez was named the personal representative of Hernandez yesterday after a brief hearing at the Bristol County Probate Court, according to Leontire. He declined to say whether the convicted killer had a will.