Aaron Hernandez Double Murder Trial: Jury Says Not Guilty

Originally published April 14, 2017

BOSTON, MA — A jury has decided that Aaron Hernandez is not the man who killed Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado.

As tears streamed down the eyes of the former New England Patriots star, jurors in Suffolk Superior Court acquitted Hernandez of seven of eight charges stemming from a July 2012 incident in the South End, including two counts of first degree murder and a witness intimidation charge related to the alleged shooting of Hernandez's former friend Alexander Bradley.

He was found guilty of unlawful possession of a firearm and sentenced to 4-5 years in a state prison, to run separate from the life sentence he is serving for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.

"Mr. Hernandez was wrongly accused of those crimes, that was a tragedy. We are happy that the jury saw what we saw all along that there is not sufficient evidence to convict Mr. Hernandez," defense attorney Ron Sullivan said.

Prosecutors alleged that Hernandez shot the two at a stop light because he was upset that one of the men bumped into him and spilled a drink on him while inside Cure Lounge in the Theater District. Jurors, however, never saw video footage of the alleged incident.

Jose Baez, Hernandez’s attorney, said his client was not the shooter, rather accusing Bradley of pulling the trigger over a drug deal gone bad.

Bradley, who is in jail for a nightclub shooting in Connecticut, said he was the driver when Hernandez leaned towards his window and shot de Abreu and Furtado. Baez instead accused Bradley of being the one who pulled the trigger, noting his criminal past.

Hernandez still has an automatic appeal in the Lloyd case. Sullivan said Hernandez's defense team plans on speaking to him about the appeal in a few days. He currently has a court-appointed attorney in the case out of Bristol County.

Image Credit: Nancy Lane/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool