National Football League

Judge allows police video of phone call in Aaron Hernandez trial

Published Feb. 13, 2015 10:06 a.m. ET

foxsports

FALL RIVER, Mass. — Friday was video day at the Aaron Hernandez murder trial — and a day that included a victory for prosecutors hoping to convince a jury the former football star is guilty of murder in the death of Odin Lloyd.

Judge E. Susan Garsh denied an effort from Hernandez's attorneys to block the jury from seeing a video that showed the player making calls on his attorney’s phone hours after the discovery of Lloyd's body.

And though that video wasn’t shown to the jury on Friday — it is expected to be played next week — its inclusion is a win for prosecutors, who contend that the film shows Hernandez making calls to an accomplice and directing the cover-up of Lloyd’s murder.

The defense won one small concession: the prosecution will not be allowed to tell the jury whose phone Hernandez was using in the video. But to win that point, the defense had to stipulate that the phone did not belong to Hernandez.

Defense attorney James Sultan sought to block the jury from seeing any of the video, which was filmed from a camera on the side of the police station in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, arguing that it was an improper violation of Hernandez's privacy because, among other things, a detective zoomed in close enough to determine the numbers being called.

The judge didn’t see it that way. The detective's use of a zoom, Garsh said, was "analogous to the use of binoculars by the police to get an enhanced look at something that is in plain view."

The video was originally expected to be played later in the day Friday. However, other testimony ate up the entire day.

Hernandez, 25, faces one count of murder and two firearms charges in the June 17, 2013 killing of Lloyd, who was gunned down in a secluded field less than a mile from the player's home. Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-professional football player, was dating Shaneah Jenkins, sister of Hernandez's finacee Shayanna Jenkins.

Prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez summoned two associates from his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, to his Massachusetts home late the night of June 16, 2013, and simultaneously made plans to meet with Lloyd. Hernandez then allegedly drove the other two men, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace Jr., to the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, picked up Lloyd and returned to North Attleboro.

According to court documents, Hernandez allegedly drove into a secluded area in an industrial park that is surrounded by woods and mounds of asphalt, gravel and dirt. There, Lloyd was shot multiple times.

Although prosecutors have not said who they believe fired the fatal shots, they have asserted that Hernandez "orchestrated" the killing. Ortiz and Wallace have also been indicted on murder charges but will be tried separately. The prosecution does not plan to call either as a witness in the trial.

Initial testimony Friday came from Massachusetts police Sgt. Kevin Halle, who dug up the ground beneath the spot where Lloyd's body was found and recovered two bullets. He described using a pick axe to break up the hard soil, then sifting it to search for evidence.

"I was screening the material that we had taken out, the first shovel full, and looking at the screen there was projectile,” Halle testified.

He then described the same process that led to the recovery of a second bullet.

Prosecutors contend the bullets constitute proof that Lloyd was wounded and on his back on the ground when two shots were fired into his chest. The bullets passed through his body and lodged in the dirt and gravel beneath him.

Prosecutors also elicited testimony from a police detective who described Hernandez as agitated and upset when officers approached him several hours after Lloyd’s body was discovered.

North Attleboro police Det. Daniel Arrighi testified that he and a state trooper knocked on Hernandez’s door and rang his bell for 40 minutes but got no response. The television and the lights were on in the house, but they saw no one.

The two had gone to Hernandez’s home after detectives found keys to a car rented by the NFL star in the pocket of Lloyd’s jeans.

“You guys aren’t coming in here,” Hernandez told the officers as he approached his front door, Arrighi testified.

But Sultan pursued the defense’s contention that detectives were sloppy when he cross-examined Arrighi, one of the first officers to arrive at the crime scene.

Sultan scored some points as he tried to undermine Arrighi’s testimony about noticing and photographing “fresh” tire marks and footprints in the area where Lloyd’s body was discovered.

“You have no idea whether those marks were there for 24 minutes or 24 hours or somewhere in between, Detective Arrighi, do you?” Sultan asked.

“That’s correct,” Arrighi said.

And Sultan also showed multiple photographs taken by Arrighi that depicted shoe prints in the area — after the detective had said that he’d seen only two footprints in the area.

When Sultan asked Arrighi whether it was true that he had photos of many more than two shoe prints, the detective demurred.

“I can’t say definitively … I have no training whatsoever as to footwear impressions,” Arrighi said. “I stand by my photos.”

Testimony in the case, which has been fraught with delays caused by bad weather and scheduling issues, is expected to go until late into the afternoon Friday and then resume on Tuesday, after the President’s Day holiday.

Hernandez has separately been indicted on multiple murder and assault charges in a July 16, 2012, shooting in South Boston that left two men dead and another wounded.

In the Boston killings, prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez became enraged after a man bumped him on a nightclub dance floor, spilling his drink, and failed to apologize. They alleged that Hernandez later followed the man and his friends as they drove away from the club, then pulled up next to their car at a stoplight and opened fire with a .38-caliber revolver, killing Daniel De Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, and wounding another man.

That trial was originally scheduled to begin May 28, but the judge there indicated recently he would push it back given the anticipated length of the trial in the Lloyd case. No new trial date has been set.