Aaron Hernandez's bid to have the trial for the murder of former associate and semipro football player Odin Lloyd moved out of Bristol County was denied by Superior Court Judge Susan E. Garsh. The judge ultimately ruled that the data cited by Hernandez's prosecutors proving he wouldn't receive a fair trial there were not reliable.
Hernandez's attorneys conducted polls of Bristol residents that they say overwhelmingly indicate Hernandez's guilt has been determined in their eyes before the trial's even begun. They said the heavy media coverage Hernandez's legal proceedings has ruined his chance for fairness. "This has poisoned the jury pool in Bristol County,'' attorney Michael Fee said.
In writing his defense team said, "As the telephone polls conducted for the Defendant demonstrate, due to pre-trial publicity the likes of which have perhaps never been seen in Massachusetts, a deep and objective jury pool simply does not exist in Bristol County."
The prosecutors opposed their reasoning for the venue change, and went even further by accusing the defense team of ripping lines directly from the defense lawyers for Dzokhar Tsarnaev, one of the men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing.
"By simply cutting and pasting the work of others, the Commonwealth conveys the message that a recycled opposition is sufficient to blunt Hernandez's motion for a change of venue. In so doing, the Commonwealth greatly misapprehends the well-founded basis for Hernandez's motion and the unique circumstances of this case,'' the defense wrote.
Hernandez's legal team responded to the prosecutors' accusations by saying their request was standard considering the media attention both Hernandez's murder trial and the Boston marathon bombing received. "We do not respond to personal attacks, especially where the very issue before the court is the extent of media sensationalism surrounding the present case," they said in a statement.
"To the extent that both the Tsarnaev and Hernandez change of venue motions raise the same basic legal issues, we were required to cite the same Supreme Court cases setting out the governing law as the US Attorney's Office. Any experienced legal observer would understand that this is a standard practice."
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