SEARCH FOR ‘CONTRABAND’ ON
Souza-Baranowski prison put in lockdown days after Hernandez jail cell suicide
Prison officials are hunting for “contraband” at the supermax prison in Shirley where disgraced former Patriot Aaron Hernandez committed suicide in his cell last week.
“The prison is in lockdown as a general search for contraband is under way for the next few days,” Department of Correction spokesman Christopher Fallon told the Herald last night.
He said the search is for “weapons, drugs or excess property.”
Family visits have been suspended and only lawyers are being allowed to see inmates at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, who are being fed in their cells.
He would not say if any of that contraband was found in Hernandez’s cell.
Meanwhile, the jurors who acquitted Hernandez of a 2012 double murder were invited to his funeral Monday in the former NFL star’s hometown of Bristol, Conn. — with one saying he was stunned by the offer.
“I was invited, but I decided ultimately not to go,” said Robert Monroe, one of 12 jurors who on April 14 acquitted Hernandez of the murders of Cape Verdean immigrants Daniel de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28. Both were living in Dorchester.
“I received a message, if any of the jurors wanted to go to the Aaron Hernandez funeral, that (defense attorney) Jose Baez would rent a bus to get us back and forth,” Monroe told the Herald yesterday.
Monroe, 27, of Boston, would not disclose in what form, or who was behind the invite, but did say he received the message last week.
Monroe is unsure if any of the jurors attended the funeral.
Hernandez’s attorneys declined comment.
Lindsey Stringer, forewoman of the jury, when reached yesterday, would only say, “I did not go.”
Monroe said he was taken aback by the invite.
“I actually asked a bunch of my friends, should I go? And they thought it was strange. Initially I wanted to go and maybe get some closure, this whole, confusing thing ... his suicide ... I would have been out of place, I’m not family or a friend,” he said.
State officials have said Hernandez, 27, used a bedsheet to hang himself from his cell window April 19 before guards found him about 3:05 a.m.
Hernandez was serving a life sentence after being convicted of the 2013 murder of his friend Odin L. Lloyd near his former North Attleboro mansion.
Hernandez’s attorneys have moved to formally vacate that 2015 conviction for Lloyd’s fatal shooting. Attorney John M. Thompson filed a motion to “abate prosecution” in superior court for Bristol County, according to records obtained yesterday.
Gregg Miliote, spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, said an opposition motion should be filed “within the next week.”
In an audio recording of a Monday hearing between state officials and Hernandez attorney George Leontire regarding letters to Hernandez’s family he purportedly wrote before his death, Leontire acknowledged during a sidebar that Hernandez’s attorneys are looking into whether the former tight end might have been murdered.
During the same sidebar, Leontire said that rumors are swirling about Hernandez’s sexuality.
Baez released a statement yesterday calling such reports “malicious leaks” and urging those spreading “malicious untruths to cease immediately.”