Aaron Hernandez News Update: Attorneys for Former NFL Star Want Double Murder Indictment Tossed
Attorneys for already jailed former NFL star Aaron Hernandez are seeking to have a double murder indictment against him dismissed on the grounds there is insufficient evidence to move forward.
According to ESPN, the onetime New England Patriots tight end is charged in the 2012 drive-by slayings of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado outside a downtown Boston nightclub. Investigators argue Hernandez opened fire on the two men as they sat at a traffic stoplight after one of them had spilled a drink on him earlier in the evening and failed to apologize. Hernandez is already serving a sentence of life without parole in the June 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd.
In their motion to have the Boston indictment thrown out by a Massachusetts judge, lawyers for Hernandez argue that Carlos Ortiz lied to police in providing them with the information they used to obtain a search warrant for the Toyota 4Runner Hernandez allegedly drove on the night of the shooting.
Ortiz, who also faces murder charges in the Lloyd case, directed police to the Bristol, Connecticut home where the car was later found and seized. Surveillance video from the night of the shooting shows Hernandez rolling around town in a vehicle resembling the one found at the Lake Avenue residence.
The Boston shooting came just six weeks after Hernandez inked a five-year, $40 million extension with the Patriots. The Boston shooting was considered a cold case investigation that may have never resulted in an arrest, before Hernandez was charged in the Lloyd killing and Ortiz directed police to Lake Avenue property.
The 25-year-old Hernandez is now being held at the Souza-Baranowski maximum security facility after being convicted in the Lloyd case last April. He is scheduled to stand trial for the Boston killings later this year.
"The deliberate omission of Ortiz's failed polygraph examination from the June 26th warrant affidavit misled the court to rely on information provided by Ortiz as credible," wrote Hernandez's attorney James Sultan. "Absent reliance on this inherently untrustworthy source, the affidavit supporting the June 26 warrant application clearly failed to establish probable cause to search 114 Lake Avenue in Bristol."
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