Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez is due in court today for a pre-trial hearing ahead of his defense in the murder of 27-year-old semipro football player and former friend Odin Lloyd. Jury selection is set to begin on January 5, but a big dispute needs to be cleared up first.
Hernandez's legal team wants the prosecution barred from telling the jury about Hernandez's suspected involvement in a 2012 double homicide in Boston. He is going to face trial in that case in the spring of 2015.
In that case Hernandez is accused of gunning down Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, two men with whom Hernandez had an altercation inside a Boston nightclub over a spilled drink. The ex-NFL star is accused of leaving the bar, waiting for the two men to exit, then pulling up on the side of them while they waited for a traffic light to change and opening fire.
According to reports, the prosecutors have a litany of Hernandez's misdeeds that includes the suspected double-murder, guns found upon a search of his North Attleborough, Massachusetts mansion, and a picture of Hernandez inside his home carrying a handgun. The former Patriot's defense team termed the list "cryptic."
The jury selection process promises to be a spectacle, with as many as 1,000 potential jurors set to be interviewed on Judge Susan E. Garsh's orders. That number is 20 times the typical amount brought in for a typical murder case, and "10 times more than has been required for a murder trial in a Massachusetts courthouse in the past five years."
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