Jury enters fourth day of deliberations in Hernandez murder trial
The Aaron Hernandez jury returns for a fourth day of deliberations today, having considered the disgraced ex-New England Patriot’s double-murder case for 19 hours so far since Friday.
Jurors did not ask any questions yesterday. They emerged poker-faced and avoiding eye contact in Courtroom 906 after 4 p.m., when the forewoman informed Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Locke the group had gone as far as it could for the day.
Meanwhile, in response to an earlier question, Locke told them the evidence indicated Hernandez and no one else shot prosecution witness Alexander Bradley in the face. Monday, jurors had asked Locke if they could convict Hernandez of intimidating the prosecution’s star witness Bradley if they only found he was “indirectly” responsible for Bradley being shot in the face in Florida and losing his right eye.
Locke told them yesterday after a discussion with the trial teams that although the state’s law on witness intimidation reads “directly or indirectly” threatening or causing harm to someone, in this case, prosecutors had to convince them beyond a reasonable doubt that Hernandez was the shooter in order to convict.
There were at least two other men in the Range Rover when, Bradley testified, he awoke on Feb. 13, 2013, to find Hernandez pointing a gun between his eyes. However, Locke told the attorneys if jurors are making the leap that someone else in the SUV took the gun from Hernandez and pulled the trigger, “We have no evidence to support that. I mean, it would be rank speculation.”
Locke told the jury that based on the government’s theory of the case, “There’s no evidence that anyone else committed the shooting or pointed the weapon.”
In the killings of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, Bradley testified he was driving Hernandez’s Toyota 4Runner on July 16, 2012, when they pulled up beside a BMW at a South End traffic light and Hernandez fatally shot de Abreu and Furtado because de Abreu spilled a drink on the NFL star at the Cure Lounge.
The defense contends Bradley, currently in prison for shooting up a nightclub in Hartford, Conn., killed the men over a drug deal.