The case-in-chief presented by the prosecution in the first Aaron Hernandez murder case included 131 witnesses. The first of only three witnesses presented by Hernandez showed that his lawyers will put plenty of eggs into a fairly bizarre basket.
At closing argument, Hernandez’s lawyers will attempt to show that reasonable doubt as to his guilt exists because it’s possible that Carlos Ortiz and/or Ernest Wallace killed Odin Lloyd in a fit of rage induced by ingestion of PCP.
Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports explains why the testimony of Dr. David Greenblatt possibly did more harm than good, thanks to a skillful cross examination that made the effort to create reasonable doubt seem like spitballs of speculation aimed at sticking to the walls of the jury room, giving those inclined to acquit Hernandez a plausible basis for doing so. Greenblatt admitted that he doesn’t know if Wallace and/or Ortiz had taken PCP and that it would be impossible to know it without a toxicology report (or without testimony from Wallace and/or Ortiz that they had taken PCP). Greenblatt also admitted that it would be impossible to know if they’d suffered PCP-induced psychosis that resulted in the shooting of Lloyd.
Greenblatt also admitted that drinking alcohol can lead to violent acts, which as Wetzel notes dovetails with testimony from Hernandez’s fiancée that Hernandez was drunk that night.
The decision to call Greenblatt shows that Hernandez’s lawyers feel compelled to introduce an alternative explanation for a mountain of circumstantial evidence that points to Hernandez committing the murder personally or being sufficiently involved in a joint venture to be culpable. If the only alternative explanation is that the other two men in the car with Hernandez and Lloyd killed Lloyd in a fit of PCP-related psychosis without any evidence that the two men had taken PCP, Hernandez’s lawyers would have been better off ignoring that angle and harping at closing arguments on the notion that there’s still no murder weapon and no proof of a motive to kill Lloyd, even though proof of motive isn’t technically required.
Thanks to Greenblatt’s testimony, the jury may now be even more inclined to convict Hernandez without a specific motive, embracing the notion that Hernandez killed Lloyd in a fit of drunken rage -- especially if the jurors apply common sense to undisputed evidence that Hernandez instructed his fiancée to get rid of a mystery box not by throwing it in the trash at their home but by throwing it in some random dumpster.