The on-again, off-again first Aaron Hernandez murder trial has reached the “strenuously object” phase.
Via the Associated Press, the lawyers and Judge E. Susan Garsh revisited on Friday the question of whether texts sent by the late Odin Lloyd to his sister could be used at trial. Lloyd sent the messages to alert his sister that he left in the middle of the night with “NFL.”
The prosecution called Lloyd’s sister to the witness stand, and the defense lawyers requested a conference with the judge away from the hearing of the jury. Judge Garsh soon ordered a recess, presumably for further discussion of the issue. When court resumed, Judge Garsh said that the court would tell the jurors that Lloyd was alive at 3:22 a.m. ET.
That wasn’t good enough for prosecutor Bill McCauley, who per the AP “became agitated,” insisting that the jury be told four text messages were sent by Lloyd, at 3:07 a.m., 3:11 a.m., 3:22 a.m., and 3:23 a.m. Judge Garsh continued to resist, and McCauley continued to push.
“I have made a ruling,” Judge Garsh eventually said. “My ruling stands!”
The content of the text messages has been excluded because they are hearsay (out of court statements) that apparently don’t fall within any of the potential exceptions to the hearsay rule when the person who made the statement isn’t available to testify. By pushing as a fallback for the jury to be told that Lloyd actually sent text messages at those times, which isn’t a statement but an action, McCauley could be hoping that the jury will speculate that those late-night/early-morning messages contained requests for help, from Lloyd’s sister or from someone else.