Aaron Hernandez's Lawyer: Former Patriot Didn't Kill Odin Lloyd Because He Had No Motive

The former New England Patriots star is standing trial for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd. He has pleaded not guilty.

Opening statements in Aaron Hernandez's first-degree murder trial took place Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutor Patrick Bomberg built his case on surveillance video of Hernandez, his friends Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, and victim Odin Lloyd the night of the murder, along with evidence from text messages and stories that attempted to establish Hernandez as the only person involved who had a personal relationship with the victim.

Defense attorney Michael Fee built his defense of Hernandez around the same close companionship between the defendant and the victim. He presented the jury with the theory that the prosecution had first decided to pursue Hernandez as the suspect, and only then gathered evidence to support a story they'd already convinced themselves was true. His hook was that the investigation was sloppy and that they had failed to establish a motive.

Hernandez's lawyer says his defendant was a young, successful football player with cool friends and a girlfriend and a baby, and that he'd have no reason to compromise his career and stability by involving himself in a murder.

Both attorneys told stories about Hernandez and Lloyd going out together and getting high together.

The prosecutor told the jury a story about Hernandez and Lloyd going out to a club together, during which a valet attendant allegedly watched Hernandez fiddle with a gun in his waistband. Hernandez has been named as a person of interest in two other incidents at nightclubs — once in Florida, and once in Boston in 2012. The details of those incidents are inadmissible in this trial, though.

Hernandez's attorney said his client and the victim were buddies who liked to party together, as would be expected of a young athlete like Hernandez. He spent a few minutes building up the close nature of their relationship (at the time of his death, Lloyd was in a long-distance relationship with Hernandez's fiancée's sister). He focused heavily of their mutual love for marijuana, and said that on the night Odin Lloyd was murdered, Hernandez had just wanted to "go out with the guys."

Fee did not attempt to establish an alibi for Hernandez on the night of the murder, as the jury had already seen surveillance video from the evening, but did attempt to present the nature of the night as being misrepresented by the prosecution.

The prosecution showed a series of text messages between Hernandez and Lloyd, but first showed a text message Hernandez sent to his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins:

The "other spot" Hernandez refers to in the text message is a small apartment he kept in Franklin, Massachusetts.

Bomberg then turned to evidence that had already been made public, mostly surveillance tapes that showed Hernandez, along with friends Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, leaving his home, picking up Odin Lloyd in Boston, driving into the spot where Lloyd's body was found, then arriving back at Hernandez's home in North Attleborough. Bomberg revealed that police had found an unlit joint at the scene of the crime that had DNA from Hernandez and Lloyd on it.

The jury was shown a surveillance image from Hernandez's home in which he is holding what appears to be a Glock. The surveillance video then goes dead, which the prosecutors claim was Hernandez's doing. The defense attempted to use the tape to maintain Hernandez's innocence, saying that if he were guilty, he would have turned it off prior to any wrongdoing.

At the conclusion of the statements, Judge E. Susan Garsh reminded jurors that the prosecution is not obligated to prove Hernandez fired the lethal shot, but that he participated in the crime, and that his involvement was intentional.

Additional details on what evidence the jury will and will not hear during the duration of the trial can be found here.

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