If the prosecutors’ plan for convicting Aaron Hernandez of murder is to rely on Carlos Ortiz, they may need a better plan.
Via the Boston Herald, prosecutors disclosed during the bail hearing for Ernest Wallace (pictured) that Ortiz now claims that only Hernandez exited the car before Odin Lloyd was shot and killed in an industrial park near Hernandez’s Massachusetts home.
Previously, Ortiz supposedly said that both Hernandez and Wallace got out of the car, and that Wallace later told Ortiz that Hernandez had admitted to shooting Lloyd. (That’s an odd admission for Hernandez to make to Wallace, since Wallace presumably was aware of the shooting.)
The summary of evidence presented without testimony from Ortiz successfully kept Wallace behind bars subject to $500,000 bail. But the contradiction in Ortiz’s testimony could help give Hernandez’s lawyers enough ammunition to create reasonable doubt, via the Chewbacca defense or otherwise.
It’s a low bar, and it Ortiz can’t get his story straight as to the most critical moment for the case, why should a jury believe anything he says?
