It’s official…Aaron Hernandez will be spending the rest of his life in jail. Early this morning, a jury consisting of seven women and five men found the former New England Patriots tight end guilty of first degree murder. After a three-and-a-half-month long trial and seven days of deliberations, the jury finally reached a verdict on whether or not Hernandez was guilty of murdering his friend Odin Lloyd back in June of 2013. On top of the murder charge, Hernandez was also found guilty on five firearm charges, including carrying a firearm without a license, 2 counts of carrying a large capacity firearm, possession of ammunition without an FID card, and possession of a firearm without an FID card.
When the verdict was announced, Hernandez was surprisingly calm, only seen shaking his head and mouthing the word “wrong” upon hearing the jury’s decision. His mom Terri Hernandez and fiancee Shayanna Jenkins were much more emotional, as they embraced each other, crying hysterically. He turned to them and mouthed a simple “It’s okay”.
About an hour after the verdict was announced, the judge officially sentenced Hernandez to life in prison without the possibility of parole, which is the automatic sentence for a first degree murder charge.
Though Hernandez may have seemed guilty from the time he was arrested, the verdict is still surprising to some, mostly because of the way the actual trial developed. The prosecution had a lot of big holes in its argument. First, no murder weapon was ever found. Second, no eyewitnesses testified. But at the end of the day, what the prosecution presented was still enough for the jury to believe that Hernandez is a murderer.
Hernandez still faces two more murder charges related to a 2012 Boston drive-by shooting that resulted in the deaths of Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado .
It is crazy to think that just two years ago, Aaron Hernandez was living out a dream. He was a star player for one of the best NFL teams in the country, making a ridiculous amount of money, and was loved and adored by fans everywhere. And now, just two years later, he faces the incredibly harsh reality of life in prison without parole. The story of Hernandez’s downfall is hard to make sense of but more than anything, it teaches us that life really comes at you fast.
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