Aaron Hernandez’s Attorneys Want Tattoo Evidence Banned In Double Murder Trial
Attorneys for already jailed former NFL star Aaron Hernandez are desperately fighting to keep intricate details about at least two of his tattoos out of evidence in his upcoming double-murder trial.
Suffolk County First Assistant District Attorney Patrick M. Haggan told the court during a recent pre-trial hearing that the distinctive tats are evidence that Hernandez was the triggerman in the 2012 slayings of Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu outside a downtown Boston nightclub.
A few months after that in Florida, Hernandez is also accused of opening fire on Alexander Bradley, the only known eyewitness to the Boston shooting.
According to prosecutors, after the Bradley shooting Hernandez sought out a tattoo artist in Hermosa Beach and directed the artist to craft two distinctive tattoos for him. One of the images was of a revolver loaded with five bullets, which allegedly represents the five shots he fired in the deadly Boston shooting. The phrase “god forgives” was also tatted nearby.
Prosecutors added the artist also drew a semi-automatic handgun and a spent shell casing and a puff of smoke, a scene they contend precisely mirrors the way Bradley was shot, with a single spent shell casing being recovered at the scene.
In arguing against allowing any such theories into evidence, defense attorney Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. termed the prosecutor’s claims as “rank speculation, adding to allow jurors to hear it would be a violation of his client’s right to a fair trial.
“That people get tattoos with a gun on them does not mean that the Commonwealth is allowed to file inference on top of inference on top of inference and get to the point that this is an admission,” he said.
“If there were a tattoo that read something like, ‘I’m responsible for this,’ or, ‘I’m responsible for that,’ then perhaps that would fall under a reasonable definition of admission.”
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke has yet to rule on the issue. A trial is slated to commence on Feb. 13.
Back in early 2014, prosecutors made a public appeal for any tattoo artist who did work on Hernandez between February 2012 and June 2013 to step forward.
Meanwhile, attorneys for Hernandez are also petitioning the court to block prosecutors from using allegedly incriminating text messages exchanged between him and Bradley.
Hernandez’s sports agent, Brian Murphy, testified that he believes the text messages in question are protected by lawyer-client privilege, even though the Harvard Law School graduate was not a practicing attorney in 2013 when the exchanges took place.
In a text sent out on June 11, 2013, Bradley laid out the particulars of a civil complaint where he alleged Hernandez was responsible for shooting him in the eye and admonished him for not accepting the early terms of his settlement offer.
Lawyers for Hernandez also recently moved to uncover who may have had access to recordings of his telephone conversations while he was being held in jail in 2014.
His high-powered team of attorneys is also requesting that the judge bar any evidence prosecutors may have gathered from a cellphone Hernandez previously gave to a former lawyer who then passed it along to law enforcement after prosecutors presented a search warrant.
The former New England Patriots tight end is already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole stemming from the 2013 killing of former associate Odin Lloyd. The former semi-pro football player’s bullet-riddled body was found in an industrial park not far from Hernandez’s North Attleborough mansion.
At the time of his initial arrest, Hernandez had only recently signed a $40 million extension with the Patriots as one of star quarterback Tom Brady’s favorite targets.
[Featured Image by Jared Wickersham/Getty Images]
