Not guilty – but not innocent
The jurors who acquitted Aaron Hernandez in his recent double-murder trial didn’t believe he was entirely innocent — they just couldn’t agree on how guilty he was, according to a new report.
“I want to be very clear that a verdict of ‘not guilty’ does not mean that we declared Aaron Hernandez innocent,” jury forewoman Lindsey Stringer told the Boston Globe.
“There were basically differences of opinion on the level of potential involvement,” she said.
What the jurors did agree on is that there wasn’t enough proof to slap the former NFL star with a first-degree murder conviction for killing Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado.
The jurors didn’t trust the witnesses — including Alexander Bradley, Hernandez’s marijuana dealer who claimed to have witnessed the former Patriots tight end shoot the victims, Stringer said.