The news here in Connecticut was numbing …many news outlets reported the verdict right away when it was announced…Guilty of First Degree murder. Aaron Hernandez was a big star in the NFL with the New England Patriots. He was a bigger star back in Bristol, Ct. One of the residents of Bristol thought very highly of Hernandez before all of this happened. They remarked that with in a short time he went from being a rookie to getting a big contract from the Patriots, no one around here ever thought that could happen. His future was bright. Bristol was never in his rearview mirror and as one newscaster said “Maybe that was his undoing”
Even though there were no eyewitnesses the prosecution as stated in one report: “overcame the lack of testifying eye witnesses by painstakingly piecing together a mountain of circumstantial, forensic evidence and so-called “electronic witnesses” that was so convincing it forced the defense during closing arguments to change tactics and concede that Hernandez was at the murder site. It just claimed he didn’t do it, but rather witnessed a possible PCP-rage killing by either Ernest Wallace or Carlos Ortiz, friends of Hernandez and alleged low-level drug dealers in Connecticut.”
So now Hernandez will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The conviction carries a sentence of automatic life in prison without the possibility of parole.Hernandez will eventually be taken to the Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Cedar Junction, about a mile from Gillette Stadium, where the Patriots play, before likely being transferred to another facility where he will serve his life sentence.Which is ironic in itself.
The lives of both his family and loved ones and the family of Odin Lloyd will forever be altered. Neither family will be with their loved one any more but in Hernandez family’s cases they know he is still breathing and alive and can see him from time to time, Lloyd’s family gets no such thing. It was stated on one newscast that Hernandez life took a different turn when his father died when he was a teenager. And that he started acting out from the point on, At some point you would think though that you have to get past that especially when the stakes get higher, especially when he had so much to live for, and could have been so much more in life.
Where did Aaron Hernandez go wrong? Was it his choice of friends away from the football field? Was it the choice he made when he ended a life and forfeited everything in his at that point? Was it his mindset that he was Teflon/bulletproof and nothing was going to harm him and he would get out of this mess that he was in the middle of? Or was it all of the above?
He has the rest of his life in prison to ponder those questions and more.
One Man's Opinion 