OT - wow Aaron Hernandez kills himself
Yeah but they should have really have better access to forensic evidence now than centuries ago. If i'm on jury and there isn't such evidence, just an "eyewitness" (which are horribly unreliable to begin with) with a grudge, there's no way i'd convict
The absess of such evidence raises suspicion in itself
April 19th, 2017 at 10:42 AM ^
I agree with you and I don't want to dive into the deep end of that trial, but I followed Dan Wetzel's coverage and I know the gist.
Alexander Bradley says he was driving and Hernandez shot the victims. The defense said, no, Bradley's the one who shot them.
Doesn't that make them both the murderer and an accessory regardless of who pulled trigger? Can't you just give Hernandez a default accessory conviction and shoot for the murder from there?
They never argued he was in the car with Bradley when those guys were murdered. They found the car stashed in a Hernandez residence. Oh, and not to mention Hernandez shot Alexander Bradley in the fucking face after the fact because he was afraid he was talking too much.
How the hell does a court let that guy walk away from this incident scot free?
(And these are all rhetorical. I don't need MGoLawyers to tell me about the procedure. I don't really care. I just laugh at our system sometimes.)
April 19th, 2017 at 10:55 AM ^
that is simply an agreement to commit a crime between two or more people, and an act in furtherance. also, the act in furtherance does not have to be the ultimate act, such as shooting someone.
simple example: assume it is illegal to possess pizza, but you and i would like some. you ask me for the phone book because we want to order some, and i hand the book to you. you don't even have to call the pizza place as we would technically have committed the crime of 'conspiracy to possess pizza'. of course in real life it'll take more than that, but that is the law in an antiseptic form. lastly, the penalty for the conspiracy is usually the same as if the underlyiing crime had been committed.
bottom line is that the jury must have had different evidence, or much weaker evidence than what many here think existed.
April 19th, 2017 at 11:14 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 11:33 AM ^
I knew immediately what you meant regarding the jury not "getting it wrong" and agree with you. Terrible prosecution that was dead in the water once their star witness's text messages were read to the jury. I was simply trying to head off the "but he was aquitted in the double homicide" responses.
All good.
ESPN needs to get out of their own way on this. But they won't because they are ESPN.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:28 AM ^
fuck ESPN
What took him so long?
especially in maximum security
Right? Could have saved a whole lot of tax dollars if he had done it before his latest trial.
Too bad he didn't kill himself before he chose to kill others.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:00 AM ^
I admit I have to plead ignorance on this, but I would think modern maximum security prison cells would be relatively suicide-proof, especially with regards to things you could hang yourself from.
April 19th, 2017 at 12:01 PM ^
I doubt he was in a suicide cell. I have no idea why he was in a one man cell unless he was a management problem. All you need is a t-shirt and the end of the bed to tie it to. You cut off the flow of blood to brain and when you slump down that is when you choke yourself to death. In reality you die in your sleep. I am all but positive that is what he did.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:01 AM ^
Surprised this hasn't ended up locked. It can't be that the MGoCommunity is mellowing out, can it?...
April 19th, 2017 at 10:09 AM ^
I feel bad for his daughter. Hopefully there was something set up to where she's taken care of financially.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:11 AM ^
This man was flat out evil. He had zero conscience. No empathy and no sympathy for anyone. As a CO of some twenty years and working security at the clubs in and around Detroit I have seen my share of violence. I have always looked at inmates with gang mentality as the biggest cowards aside from the tree jumpers. Hernandez even had to call his boys to come help him kill one guy. It was his insecurities that made him violent and so goes the gang mentality. It is understandble that good people try to understand evil, but make no mistake you never will.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:15 AM ^
Aaron Hernandez is in no way, shape or form a sympathetic figure and rightly so, but as someone said above, I am also not going to celebrate anyone's suicide. It's a sad ending to what seemed like an unfortunately wasted life and wasted talent, and perhaps we'll never really know if that was Hernandez being clinically sociopathic or simply being unable to overcome problems which began in his youth or if it is a dynamic combination of these.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:30 AM ^
Wasted life, wasted talent, terrible role model to some, unsympathetic murderer, and on and on...
overused but fitting.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:35 AM ^
is that by all accounts, he grew up solidly middle-class in a good two-parent household with no gang activity whatsoever, just a normal suburban upbringing. He fell in love with the gangsta lifestyle only as an adult. When does that ever happen except in Breaking Bad?
April 19th, 2017 at 10:54 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 11:27 AM ^
He didn't have a bunch of childhood friends who pulled him into the "life", he evidently started de novo gangbanging after getting to Gainesville and then in earnest after the NFL money started rolling in and he could bankroll a full-fledged posse.
We know a kid who's 17, and he pretty much blew a potential D1 scholarship because he got in with the wrong crowd as a freshman and ended up in rehab because he was taking pills. He was one of the most natural athletes I've ever seen. He nearly broke a state record in track, played basketball and football. Now a junior, he just can't get his shit together. His most recent escapade was he got stopped while driving without a license. Took the car out after his mom went to bed and was cruising around with other kids in the car. He doesn't even have a permit because his parents were smart enough not to let him get one. He has maybe a 1.7 GPA. I could have told you this kid would end up this way when he was 6. He bucked authority back then and was a big risk taker. The only negative about his parents is they're divorced. But so were mine. Some people just have a propensity for high stakes trouble.
April 19th, 2017 at 11:26 AM ^
According to this Boston Globe article in 2013. His mother was running numbers, declaring bankruptcy twice. Aaron was certainly hanging out and emulating gangs while in high school.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/08/14/hometown-link-double-life…;
Thanks, I'm just not skilled at linking, embedding, giffing, all those modern things people do!
April 19th, 2017 at 10:47 AM ^
It's not just ESPN though. And sadly there are many,many more really mentally unstable people running around society. They just don't happen to be talented athletes. Maybe the only good out of this is to have more discussions on how we as society deal with these people with obvious mental illnesses.
April 19th, 2017 at 10:53 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 10:48 AM ^
He misunderstood what his attorney meant when he said, "hang in their bro"
April 19th, 2017 at 10:49 AM ^
I don't want to be this callous, but this guy killed two people because they spilled a drink on him. I'm not going to shed a tear for him no longer being around.
April 19th, 2017 at 11:39 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 10:51 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 11:12 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 10:55 AM ^
I find it odd some on here seem to though.
I have no sympathy for him whatsoever. I do have sympathy for his family and the families whose lives he's ruined.
The end.
April 19th, 2017 at 11:29 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 12:13 PM ^
Nice M.A.S.H. reference.
April 19th, 2017 at 11:31 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 11:32 AM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 11:41 AM ^
Ok, this guy really needs to stop killing people.
I'm either committing internet suicide or killing the game with this comment, either way I slay myself.
April 19th, 2017 at 12:33 PM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 12:49 PM ^
User name checks out.
April 19th, 2017 at 12:41 PM ^
April 19th, 2017 at 12:55 PM ^
One word - RespeKt!
One abbreviation - PCP
It's a helluva drug
April 19th, 2017 at 12:43 PM ^