Aaron Hernandez News Update: Judge Dismisses Motion to Toss Out Evidence in Drive-By, Double Slaying
Aaron Hernandez's motion to have the search warrant police used to discover the van he is alleged to have been driving during a deadly, double slaying has been dismissed by a criminal court judge.
According to ESPN, the already jailed, former New England Patriots star is accused of gunning down Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado outside a downtown Boston nightclub in 2012 after one of them spilled a drink on him earlier in the evening and failed to apologize.
Hernandez, who has pleaded not guilty, is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after recently being convicted in the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd.
During a court hearing last month, Hernandez's lawyer, James Sultan, argued any evidence recovered from the search of a Toyota 4Runner should be suppressed because the warrant was at least partly obtained based on information from a key witness who later failed a polygraph test.
Police first came across the vehicle spotted at the Bristol home of Hernandez's uncle while they were investigating the Lloyd killing.
During that same hearing, Sultan repeatedly argued that Bristol police conveniently omitted the results of the polygraph test when they relied on information Carlos Ortiz gave them to apply for the warrant. Prosecutors countered that is standard practice, given that polygraph test results are not admissible at trail.
In rendering his ruling, Judge Jeffrey Locke noted that even if the results of Ortiz's polygraph test had been included in the search warrant application, it would not have changed the finding of probable cause for the warrant.
Locke also rejected a request to throw out a charge of witness intimidation against Hernandez, stemming from an incident where he is accused of shooting associate Alexander Bradley in the face in early 2013 after he made a remark about the double slaying, angering Hernandez and making him think Bradley could no longer be trusted.
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