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Aaron Hernandez Had Severe CTE Brain Disease At The Time Of His Suicide, Daughter Sues NFL And Patriots

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 15:11 PST, Sep 21, 2017

It’s official: embattled former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez was suffering from a very severe case of the debilitating and degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) when he committed suicide in April. Hernandez’s defense attorney Jose Baez broke the news on Thursday when announcing a lawsuit that has been filed against the Patriots and NFL on behalf of Aaron Hernandez’s 4-year-old daughter, Avielle.

As Daily Mail reports, Jose Baez said Thursday that 27-year-old Aaron Hernandez had an extremely severe Stage 3 (with Stage 4 being the most extreme) case of CTE at the time of his death. According to the attorney, Hernandez’s case was the most extreme that the CTE Center at Boston University had ever seen in such a young person.

“We’re told it was the most severe case they had ever seen for someone of Aaron’s age.”

Dr. Ann McKee, director of the CTE Center, added that symptoms of the debilitating illness include potentially violent mood swings, depression, and other cognitive disorders. At the time of his death, Aaron Hernandez was incarcerated on a murder conviction and serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. According to his attorney, many of the behaviors Aaron Hernandez had exhibited in recent months and years were textbook symptoms of CTE, a condition that can only be diagnosed after death (during an autopsy).

“When hindsight is 20-20, you look back and there are things you might have noticed. But you don’t know.”

CTE, believed to be the result of repeated head trauma, has become something of a scourge of the NFL in recent years since postmortem testing of former players’ brains has become more commonplace. It has also been noted in the brains of boxers and military members. Of 111 NFL players’ brains that have been examined in recent years, 110 of them have been determined to be affected by CTE.

The lawsuit filed in connection to Aaron Hernandez and his apparent CTE, which was filed in District Court on Thursday, argued that both the NFL and New England Patriots neglected their due diligence and failed to protect the safety of their players. According to the suit, that neglect led to the disease that ultimately deprived little Avielle of the companionship of her father, Aaron Hernandez.

“Defendants were fully aware of the dangers of exposing NFL players, such as Aaron, to repeated traumatic head impacts. Yet, defendants concealed and misrepresented the risks of repeated traumatic head impacts.”

The awareness of the risks of CTE associated with professional football is so great that the NFL recently came to an agreement to compensate retired players $1 billion for injuries they sustained. Those players had claimed that the league misled them about the dangers of the game.

The Aaron Hernandez suit, known as a “loss of consortium” lawsuit, is completely independent of the $1 billion settlement. It is also the first lawsuit of its kind, according to attorney Baez.

“If we have to be groundbreakers in this area, it’s something we’re prepared to do.”

At the time of his death, Aaron Hernandez was serving prison time for the murder of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd. He was released from his position with the New England Patriots shortly after his arrest. Since his April suicide, that murder conviction has been voided because he hadn’t exhausted all of his appeals at the time of his death, and went to his grave claiming to be innocent of the crime. Prosecutors have since appealed the decision to void Hernandez’s murder conviction.

Just prior to his suicide, Aaron Hernandez was acquitted of murdering two other men in a 2012 Boston drive-by shooting. Throughout his trial, Hernandez had proclaimed his innocence in the slayings. According to Jose Baez, the reason that CTE was not mentioned as part of Aaron Hernandez’s defense at either of these trials is that Hernandez stood by his innocence.

“It’s something I deeply regret.”

Spokespersons for the NFL and Patriots have thus far declined to publicly comment about the pending Aaron Hernandez CTE lawsuit.

[Featured Image by Dominick Reuter/Pool Photo/AP Images]

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