But TL Singleton was dead. Tanya Singleton had been charged with conspiracy to commit murder after the fact. And Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace had already been indicted as accessories after the fact to the murder of Odin Lloyd. (Prosecutors subsequently upped the charges to murder.) Their trials would not start until well after Aaron’s was over.
Shayanna Jenkins had been charged with a single count of perjury—prosecutors alleged that she had lied, twenty-nine times, to Aaron’s grand jury. Among other things, prosecutors would say, Jenkins had lied about: conversations she and Hernandez had had about Odin Lloyd’s murder; a conversation she had had with Wallace after the murder; the number of guns she had seen in her home; the removal of items from her home; and whether she had threatened the women who had cleaned her home, after the murder, with deportation. (The prosecutors ended up dropping these charges in light of Shayanna’s testimony during Aaron’s trial.)
Oscar “Papoo” Hernandez had also been indicted for lying to Aaron’s grand jury.
Odin Lloyd’s family had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Aaron Hernandez.
The families of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado had done the same.
Alexander Bradley, who was still pursuing his civil suit against Aaron, had gotten into an altercation at a Hartford nightclub called the Vevo Lounge Bar & Grill.
Shots had been fired outside of the club. Bradley was hit three times in the leg but managed to get to his car, grab his own gun, and fire ten or twelve rounds into the club.
On May 15, 2014, Aaron Hernandez himself had been indicted for two counts of first degree murder, three counts of armed assault with intent to murder, and one count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon—charges resulting from the investigation into the double murders in Boston.
One month later, on Friday, June 20, Hernandez’s lawyers filed a motion to have Aaron moved to a jail that was closer to Boston.
“In order for Hernandez to receive constitutionally guaranteed effective access to and assistance of counsel, in both cases, he needs to be held in a facility that does not require his counsel to drive up from two, up to three to four hours round-trip each time they need to meet with him,” the lawyers argued. But there was more to the motion than that.
The motion also contained several e-mails between Sheriff Hodgson and prosecutors. According the lawyers, they suggested an unprecedented degree of cooperation between DAs and the sheriff.
Hodgson had “abandoned his role as a professional jailer and energetically embraced his role as a full-time agent of the District Attorney,” the lawyers claimed, taking every opportunity to speak, publicly, about his most famous inmate, and engaging in “self-promotion and virtually non-stop publicity of every imaginable kind.” (Sheriff Hodgson denied all of these charges, and said that speaking, publicly, about Hernandez provided Aaron’s fans with a valuable object lesson.)
According to the lawyers, Hodgson’s actions had poisoned the potential jury pool.
Moreover, they argued, Aaron’s life was in danger in Bristol County. Because corrections officers at the prison were under the impression that Aaron had threatened CO Joshua Pacheco’s life, his safety could no longer be guaranteed. (This impression was false, the lawyers claimed. Four days earlier, Aaron had been arraigned on charges of assaulting an inmate and threatening Pacheco.)
Sheriff Hodgson scoffed at the idea that anyone in his jail would retaliate against Hernandez. “I have a staff that is very professional,” he told TMZ. “They understand they’re dealing with a high-profile person and go the extra mile to ensure his safety, and other inmates’ safety.”
Nevertheless, on July 7, the lawyers’ motion was granted.
Two days later, Hernandez was moved to Boston’s Suffolk County Jail, where he would spend an uneventful and incident-free six months.
Then, on January 8, 2015, Hernandez was sent back to Bristol County Jail, where he would remain for the duration of his trial for the murder of Odin Lloyd.
Part Ten
Chapter 79
Bristol County’s Superior Courthouse stood like a sentry at the corner of Main and Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts.
It was January 29, 2015. A cold, clear day in the decaying industrial city. Aaron Hernandez’s murder trial, presided over by Judge Susan Garsh, had already been postponed, several times, because of blizzards.
Today, the trial would finally be starting.
Outside, it was the usual media circus, with TV reporters huddling in their news vans for warmth as they waited for Aaron to arrive at the courthouse.
Inside, Hernandez was brought to Courtroom 7 on the building’s fifth floor. Through the windows, he had a view of Braga Bridge and beneath it, the Quequechan River. But Aaron did not look around the courtroom as Assistant DA Patrick Bomberg—one of four prosecutors assigned to the case—laid out the Commonwealth’s position.
Aaron did not glance at Shayanna, who was sitting with Terri and DJ, as Bomberg did so.
Shaneah Jenkins, who had graduated from college and enrolled in law school, was also there in the courtroom, sitting far away from her sister and next Odin Lloyd’s mother, Ursula.
It was an obvious sign of the rift that Odin’s death had caused between the sisters.
Ursula was wearing purple, Odin’s favorite color.
Aaron was dressed in the same dark suit he had worn to his indictment, seventeen months earlier. As he had on that occasion, Aaron kept his composure and showed no emotion.
Everyone in attendance knew that the trial would be long, complex, and sensational. The British did not play American football, but British tabloids would cover the case closely. So would the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, and faraway media outlets in Hawaii, Alaska—even Fiji.
At Sports Illustrated, the in-house legal analyst, Michael McCann, geared up to file long, daily dispatches.
For the prosecutors, the stakes were remarkably high: Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter had signed up to prosecute the case himself. But just before Christmas, Sutter had been elected mayor of Fall River. Now, First Assistant District Attorney William McCauley would be leading the prosecution.
McCauley and Susan Garsh had clashed in the courtroom before.
In 2010, the assistant DA had prosecuted George Duarte, a New Bedford man who had shot and killed a fifteen-year-old boy. McCauley had won that case, but criticized Garsh for exhibiting “unnecessary, discourteous, and demeaning” words, tone, and behavior during the trial. But if there was no love lost between the judge and the DA, Garsh was bent on presiding over Aaron’s high-profile trial. When McCauley asked for another judge, citing the “well-known and publicly documented history of antagonism” between them, Garsh denied the motion.
She would also allow the case to be taped for broadcast, guaranteeing it an even more permanent place in the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
For Aaron Hernandez, the stakes could not be any higher: McCauley had charged him with murder in the first degree. If his lawyers, Michael Fee, James Sultan, and Charles Rankin, lost the case, Hernandez would be imprisoned for life automatically, without the possibility of parole.
But Hernandez was not the only person on trial.
The law enforcement officials who had investigated Odin Lloyd’s murder would find themselves under blinding public scrutiny. Whatever mistakes they had made would be held up for the whole world to see.
The NFL itself had entered a prolonged period of public scrutiny: accusations relating to armed robbery, kidnapping, forced imprisonment, and sexual assault (Keith Wright), dogfighting (Michael Vick), child abuse (Adrian Peterson), domestic violence (Ray Rice, Lawrence Phillips, Greg Hardy), drug trafficking (Travis Henry), DUI manslaughter (Josh Brent), conspiracy to commit murder (Rae Carruth), and murder-suicide (Jovan Belcher), were hitting the league on a regular basis.
In 2011, Dave Duerson, who had played for the Bears, Giants, and Cardinals, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. His suicide note read, PLEASE, SEE THAT MY BRAIN IS GIVEN TO THE NFL’S BRAIN BANK.