Convicted murderer and former NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez still faces charges of double murder arising from an incident that occurred in July 2012. Hernandez now has hired a lawyer who secured an acquittal in a high-profile murder trial that went to verdict a year before someone shot and killed Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in Boston.
Jose Baez, who represented Casey Anthony in the case involving the killing of her young daughter, will represent Hernandez in his looming murder trial.
Via Deadspin, Baez will be joined by Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan and Alex Spiro. Which raises an obvious question: How will Hernandez pay for his defense?
After three years and a variety of legal entanglements, Hernandez’s money is either gone or close to it. With a trio of lawyers grinding away at a double murder case that will require plenty of elbow grease (and billable hours) to conjure reasonable doubt, it won’t be cheap -- unless they’re doing it for free.
Lawyers are always encouraged to do “pro bono” work, a term that sounds a lot fancier than “not getting paid for my skills, experience, and effort.” Pro bono work becomes a lot more appealing when the free work also brings about free publicity, which is precisely what will happen for Baez, Sullivan, and Spiro.
The double-murder case is irrelevant to Hernandez unless and until he can somehow overturn his conviction for the June 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd and somehow win a second trial. So Baez, who pulled a rabbit out of the proverbial hat in 2011 for Casey Anthony, will now be called upon to produce a warren of them for Aaron Hernandez.