As if former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez's fall from grace couldn't get any worse, it just got worse.
Deadspin.com was one of several media outlets to report Friday that two of Hernandez's associates suddenly are also being changed with Hernandez in the murder of Odin Lloyd. According to Deadspin, the prosecution no longer has to prove that Hernandez fired the weapon that killed Lloyd to convict him of murder.
On Friday, Bristol District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter's office announced that a grand jury had decided on murder indictments against Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace, both of whom were charged months ago as accessories after the fact in the slaying of Lloyd, the Boston Globe reported. A spokesman for the District Attorney's office offered no explanation and declined further comment.
Deadspin cited a Massachusetts "joint venture" law, that states that all participants of a crime are equally accountable if they "intentionally participat(e)" in its commission.
Lawyers for Ortiz and Wallace were flabbergasted by Friday's turn of events.
"We started out having a gun [charge], then accessory after the fact [of murder], and now we're up to first-degree murder," said John Connors, Ortiz's lawyer, according to the Boston Globe. "This is absolutely crazy."
He added, "Is it because they decided that they're not going to use my guy as a witness, and now they're going to squeeze him with this?"
David Meier, Wallace's attorney, said, "One can only ask, is it based on the facts and the law, or something else? Ernest Wallace looks forward to confronting his accusers in a court of law."
According to the Globe, Meier declined comment when asked whether prosecutors asked for his client's cooperation against Hernandez.
The Globe reported that plea offers could be in the making, according to Rosanna Cavallaro, a criminal law professor at Suffolk University and a former assistant attorney general.
"Now that you've actually been indicted [for murder], that probably has a stronger coercive effect than the possibility [of a murder charge] looming, and not yet real," said Cavallaro.
Gerard T. Leone Jr., a former Middlesex district attorney now working in private practice, confirmed to the Globe that charging Ortiz and Wallace with murder could make it easier to convict Hernandez of murder as a "joint venture."
It's a much more difficult case to have Hernandez as the sole person charged with murder," he said. "You have no joint venture theory against people who are charged with different charges and not the murder."
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