Aaron Hernandez, the ex-New England Patriots star tight end who stands accused of orchestrating the murder of Odin Lloyd, and pulling the trigger in his shooting death, will be back in court again today at 9:00 a.m. Follow Day 42 of the court proceedings free here.
The prosecution has rested its case, and today the defense will make its own. While it took more than 40 days for the prosecution to lay out all the evidence, the defense is believed to only need today’s proceedings to conclude its own portion of the trial.
One witness expected to testify for the defense is an expert that will challenge the DNA evidence brought forth by the prosecution, according to CNN.com. Beyond that, the fate of the former Patriot will be in the hands of the jury, who must contemplate a number of factors before rendering their verdict.
Among them will be the testimony of Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, whom prosecutors believe disposed of the murder weapon which has never been recovered. When she took the stand during trial her story changed regarding a box she removed from Hernandez’s home and threw away in a “random dumpster.” While maintaining she didn’t know what was inside the box, nor did she ask, she mentioned a “skunky” smell consistent with marijuana.
There is also the testimony of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose testimony about a face-to-face meeting with Hernandez two days after Lloyd was shot might have been incriminating.
"He said he was not involved," Kraft testified last week. "He said he was innocent, and that he hoped that the time of the murder incident came out because he said he was in a club." Because the news of Lloyd’s murder hadn’t been made public, this looks bad for the defendant.
The rest of the major plot lines involve physical, but circumstantial evidence such as shell casings and bubblegum found in a rental car Hernandez returned the day after Lloyd was killed, missing shoes, and eyewitness accounts of an “angry” Hernandez two days prior to the killing.
[CNN]
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