Former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, already serving a life sentence for one murder, could find out soon whether he’s legally guilty of two others.
Via the Associated Press, the jury in the double-murder trial against Hernandez will commence deliberations on Friday.
The prosuection contends that Hernandez shot into a car, killing Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado because of a spilled drink in a nightclub. The defense claims that Alexander Bradley, Hernandez’s former friend and now the key witness for the prosecution, fired the shots over a drug deal gone bad.
With a very high standard of proof applicable in criminal cases, it’s possible that the jury concludes that sufficient reasonable doubt exists to prevent a conviction. Looming over the process is Hernandez’s existing murder conviction and sentence. Some of the jurors know about it, but they were kept on the panel because they said they could disregard the knowledge of the other conviction.
Good luck with that. Knowing that Hernandez has killed someone else shows that he’s capable of something so dastardly, and it could lessen the gravity of sending a guy to jail for the rest of his life, since that’s where he already is.