Prosecutors decry abatement rule
Prosecutors are taking aim at the Bay State law that erased Aaron Hernandez’s murder conviction after he killed himself in jail earlier this year, arguing in an appeal to the state’s highest court that it’s time to get rid of the old doctrine.
“This is an archaic rule not based on the Constitution, and it should be changed,” Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said in a statement. “A defendant who commits suicide should not be able to manipulate the outcome of his post-conviction proceedings to achieve in death what he would not be able to achieve in life.”
Hernandez, a former New England Patriot, was found guilty of first-degree murder in April 2015 for the 2013 death of Odin Lloyd and was serving a life sentence. Days after he was found not guilty of a 2012 Boston double homicide, the 27-year-old was found dead April 19 in his cell at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.
Authorities say the former Patriot hanged himself.
Citing his death, Hernandez’s attorneys made a motion to erase his 2013 conv iction, arguing that — under the doctrine of abatement ab initio — it could no longer stand . Judge E. Susan Garsh agreed and vacated the conviction.
Bristol prosecutors appealed that decision yesterday to a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court.
“Public faith and confidence in jury verdicts would necessarily be undermined by disregarding traditional concepts of finality here,” Bristol prosecutors wrote in the appeal. “The ineluctable message abatement ab initio sends ... is that verdicts are not to be trusted — and without advancing any countervailing public policy goals.”
Hernandez’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Under abatement ab initio, if a person dies before they exhaust their right to appeal, their conviction goes away because it was never considered final. Quinn’s office fought the ruling, saying Hernandez strategically killed himself to help his family. That argument was unsuccessful before Garsh.