By the end of the trial, prosecutors had all but proven that Aaron had been in the clearing on the night of the murder.
With closing arguments approaching, Aaron’s lawyers felt that they had no choice but to admit it.
Aaron had been present, James Sultan explained, shocking everyone in the courtroom—but only as a witness to Odin Lloyd’s murder.
Ernest Wallace or Carlos Ortiz had killed Lloyd while out of their minds on PCP, the lawyers claimed. But neither Wallace nor Ortiz had been called to testify. In the end, Aaron’s defense lasted less than one day, with only three witnesses called to the stand:
Dr. David Greenblatt, a professor of pharmacology at Tufts, who described the behavioral effects of PCP. (Aaron’s cousin Jennifer Mercado had testified, previously, that she had seen Wallace and Ortiz smoking PCP.)
Eric Carita, a forensic consultant who had swabbed the Bubblicious chewing gum that one of the shell casings had stuck to, and sent to Texas for processing.
Jennifer Smith, the forensic analyst who had processed the sample and established a link to Aaron’s DNA. Smith explained that DNA can be transferred from one object, then onto another, then onto a third object—a process known as “secondary transfer.” It was “extremely likely,” Smith said, that DNA on the gum could have been transferred onto the shell casing.
On the following day, April 7, James Sultan presented his closing argument in Aaron’s defense.
The approach that the lawyer adopted now was low-key, but eloquent. Sultan’s late father, Stanley, had been a writer, a college professor, and a colleague and close friend of Sylvia Plath’s.
Now, Stanley’s son brought the measured tones of the seminar room into Judge Garsh’s courtroom.
“It’s been a long trial,” Sultan told the jury. “We started back in January. Slogged through those mountains of snow. And now, it’s spring.”
“There’s plenty of evidence,” Sultan said. “You heard from more than 130 witnesses. There are more than 430 exhibits, some of them voluminous. I submit to you, there are really two ways you can go about analyzing the evidence: The right way. And the wrong way.”
The right way, Sultan said, was to start with the presumption that Aaron Hernandez was innocent.
Hernandez and Lloyd had been friends, Sultan said. “Aaron and Odin shared a passion. A passion for marijuana. Odin was very skilled at rolling blunts. Odin would roll blunts for Aaron and they’d smoke together…On the first weekend of June 2013, Aaron and Odin were together at Club Rumor in Boston, where they went for Shayanna’s birthday party…The following weekend, Aaron and Odin were together at a club in Providence. And on Friday night, June fourteenth—a night you’ve heard a lot about—Aaron and Odin went, again, to Club Rumor in Boston. Were they friends? Obviously, they were friends. They were future brothers-in-law. But the prosecution wants to deny the obvious. The prosecution has presented, through its evidence, a number of possible theories of why Aaron would want to murder Odin. Let’s go through those, and see if they make any sense.”
Theory #1, Sultan said, was that Aaron had killed Odin because Odin had been rude to his friend Alexander Bradley.
The lawyer did not even bother to point out how ridiculous this theory was.
Theory #2 was that Aaron and Odin had argued at Rumor.
But, according to Sultan, this theory rested entirely on the testimony of a single, unreliable witness.
Theory #3 was that Aaron was worried about Odin telling Shaneah about their misadventures with Jennifer Fortier and Amanda DeVito.
But hadn’t Aaron already told Shayanna about their trip to his “other spot”?
“What about infidelity?” Sultan asked. “Is Aaron worried that Shayanna’s going to find out that he was out chasing after other women? What did Shayanna tell you? She told you she knew all about Aaron’s interest in chasing other women. She didn’t like it. But she hoped he’d outgrow it.”
Then, shifting gears, the lawyer asked the jury to consider whether Aaron could really have been stupid enough to kill Odin Lloyd himself.
“If Aaron planned in advance to murder Odin, why would he do so in his own town…in an open location less than a mile from his home? If Aaron had planned in advance to murder Odin, why would he leave keys to a car he had rented in Odin’s pocket? Along with Odin’s cell phone and wallet? And for that matter, why did Odin still have his cell phone? If Aaron had planned in advance to murder Odin Lloyd, why would he bring along two witnesses? And if Aaron had planned in advance to murder Odin Lloyd, why was a blunt found at the scene? A blunt shared by none other than Aaron Hernandez and Odin Lloyd, two friends who shared an interest in marijuana?”
As for the box that Shayanna had removed from the house: Had the police found any marijuana during their searches of Aaron’s house? Given how much Aaron smoked, didn’t it stand to reason that they had not because the heavy box that Shayanna had placed in a black bag and removed from the basement, after the murder, was full of marijuana, and nothing but marijuana?
“Is it possible that the murder weapon was inside that bag that Shayanna removed that day?” Sultan asked. “Of course it’s possible. Of course it’s possible. Anything is possible. But a murder charge, a murder conviction, can’t be based on possibilities, on guesswork, on speculation. That’s not good enough.”
Had Aaron made all the right decisions? Sultan readily admitted that Aaron had not. “He was a twenty-three-year-old kid,” the lawyer said. “Who had witnessed something. A shocking killing. Committed by somebody he knew. He really didn’t know what to do, so he just put one foot in front of the other. Keep in mind, he’s not charged with being an accessory after the fact. You couldn’t even find him guilty of that if you wanted to. He’s charged with murder. And that he did not do.”