Jurors to tour Aaron Hernandez home, crime scene
FALL RIVER, Mass. - Jurors in the murder trial of former NFL star Aaron Hernandez have set out on a bus with a police escort for a tour of several key sites in the case.
Hernandez is accused of the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins. At the time, Hernandez had a $40 million contract with the New England Patriots.
Jurors on Friday are being brought to several cellphone towers that picked up data investigators used to build a case against the former NFL player.
They will then visit the street in Boston where Lloyd lived and the industrial park where Lloyd's body was found.
They are also being taken on a tour inside Hernandez's home.
Hernandez is not allowed on the tour, but lawyers for both sides and the judge are attending.
On Thursday, a prosecutor in the case told a judge that trophies and religious items had been added to Hernandez's home since the 2013 killing, and he requested they be removed before the jury tours the house.
The defense agreed to remove the photos, game balls and other items or to cover them.
This marked the second time in a month that the court took up the question of whether jurors would be allowed to see trophies and other personal items in Hernandez's home, where Jenkins still lives. Last month, Bristol County Superior Court Judge Susan Garsh ruled that jurors would be allowed to see Hernandez's trophy case after his lawyer, James Sultan, argued that the house should be shown to jurors exactly the way it was at the time of Lloyd's death.
"The trial is about the truth. This is the truth of his house," Sultan said then.
But on Thursday, prosecutor Patrick Bomberg said he took a tour through the house a day earlier and discovered religious items had been added, as was memorabilia from Hernandez's NFL, college and high school careers. He said the items were displayed in several rooms in the house, and furniture was added to hold them.
"It's not nearly the same as it appeared back in 2013," Bomberg said.
He compared the situation to how O.J. Simpson's home was changed and manipulated before the jurors in his murder trial visited it. In that case, photographs and pictures were placed in the home to portray Simpson as a family man, and a Bible was placed on a table to play to jurors' religious sympathies.
Garsh said anything new would have to be covered or removed, and the defense agreed to do so.
Also Thursday, Sultan challenged police over how they handled evidence and the crime scene. At one point, he was questioning a state police trooper about tire pressure when he jokingly asked whether the trooper had ever received "training in football deflation devices."
The Patriots, Hernandez's former team, were accused of using underinflated footballs in their AFC championship win. The NFL is investigating.
Judge Garsh chastised Sultan Friday morning for making a joke while questioning a witness in court. She told Sultan that they are conducting serious business, and she does not expect there to be any more jokes. Sultan agreed and expressed regret.