As of this posting, the prosecution in the Aaron Hernandez murder case is presenting its closing argument. Earlier today, attorney James Sultan delivered the closing argument on behalf of the former Patriots tight end.
Sultan attacked the entire investigation, calling it “incomplete, biased, and inept.” The lawyer focused on flaws in the DNA case, which included an expert witness who testified that Hernandez’s DNA was found on a shell casing -- but who hadn’t been told by the prosecution that a wad of chewed gum had been stuck to the shell casing when it was found in a dumpster. If Hernandez chewed that gum, DNA from the gum could have transferred to the shell casing.
The goal, Sultan argued, was to prove that Hernandez killed Odin Lloyd, not to solve the case. The lawyer pointed to other alleged failures in the investigation and ultimately conceded that Hernandez witnessed a murder committed by someone he knows, essentially blaming Carlos Ortiz and/or Ernest Wallace for the shooting.
Sultan likewise introduced various common-sense questions regarding the alleged plan to kill Lloyd, including the decision to shoot Lloyd in an industrial park less than a mile from Hernandez’s home, in a town where Lloyd knew no one else, the bringing of two witnesses (Ortiz and Wallace) to the murder scene, and the failure to take from the scene a marijuana blunt that Hernandez and Lloyd both had smoked.
But common sense that would be displayed by rational minds doesn’t always explain the choices made by the irrational and/or inebriated. No one has accused Aaron Hernandez of being smart; indeed, it was his own surveillance system that showed Hernandez, Ortiz, and Wallace returning to Hernandez’s home after the murder.
If Hernandez had just witnessed Ortiz or Wallace killing Lloyd, why would Hernandez bring them after the murder inside his own home, where his young daughter was sleeping? That’s a question Sultan wisely avoided.