Closing Arguments Finished in Aaron Hernandez Trial, Jury in Deliberation

Jurors in the Aaron Hernandez trial are now in deliberation after hearing closing arguments on Tuesday morning.

Prosecutors in the Aaron Hernandez trial painted the former Patriots star as a manipulator who controlled his friends to help murder Odin Lloyd.

During the closing arguments on Tuesday morning, Bristol First Assistant District Attorney William McCauley said it was Hernandez who planned and carried out the murder of Lloyd with the assistance of Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz.

Defense attorneys for Hernandez however argued that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the murderer.

Defense attorney James Sultan called the investigation during his closing argument, “incomplete, biased, and inept,” according to the Boston Globe.

The lawyer did, however, admit for the first time that his client was at the scene of the murder and saw it happen, but said Hernandez was a 23-year-old who did not know what to do.

Hernandez is accused of murdering Lloyd, who was the boyfriend of his fiance’s sister.

According to prosecutors, Hernandez decided Lloyd had to die after he was snubbed at a Boston nightclub days prior to the killing. On June 17, 2013, Lloyd was picked up at his Boston home by Hernandez, Ortiz, and Wallace to party, but the car was driven to an industrial park in North Attleboro where Lloyd was murdered.

Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz, then returned to Hernandez’s North Attleboro home where he could be seen on home surveillance footage carrying the gun that prosecutors say was used to kill Lloyd.

Police were never able to produce a murder weapon, because Hernandez disposed of it according to McCauley. Hernandez’s fiance, Shayanna Jenkins was told to collect a box that contained the gun and disposed of it in a dumpster.

Jenkins said she never asked or checked what was in the box, estimating its weight to be 25-30 pounds.

At the completion of the trial, Hernandez faces a double murder indictment in a separate case in Suffolk Superior Court later this year. Hernandez is accused of shooting two men in Boston’s South End in July 2012.

The jury received their instructions for deliberation from the judge on Tuesday afternoon. 12 of the 15 jurors will deliberate and the remaining three were chosen as alternatives.

Photo Credit: WHDH