Attorneys make final cases during Aaron Hernandez trial closing arguments

FALL RIVER — Over almost three hours of closing arguments Tuesday, attorneys on both sides addressed the jury in the Aaron Hernandez trial to make their final pitches as to why the former New England Patriot should either be acquitted of murder or serve the rest of his life in prison.

Defense attorney James Sultan poked as many holes as he could in the prosecution's circumstantial case, telling jurors that prosecutors over 39 days of testimony from 131 witnesses had failed to prove that Hernandez, 25, had any motive or intent to kill Odin Lloyd in June 2013.

"This isn't a mystery show. The question is whether the state has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt," said Sultan, who argued that law enforcement authorities zeroed in on Hernandez from the moment a teenager jogging home discovered Lloyd's body in the North Attleborough Industrial Park on June 17, 2013.

Sultan conceded that Hernandez was present when Lloyd was killed, but he pinned the blame on one of Hernandez's alleged accomplices, Carlos Ortiz or Ernest Wallace, though Sultan did not speculate who pulled the trigger.

"He was a 23-year-old kid who witnessed something, a shocking killing, committed by someone he knew," Sultan said.

In sharp contrast, First Assistant District Attorney William McCauley, one of the trial prosecutors, told the jury that Hernandez had the means, access to handguns, the intent and knowledge to plan Lloyd's killing and the alleged cover-up that followed. Drawing on witness testimony, McCauley painted a picture of Hernandez as arrogant, secretive and possessing a violent hair-trigger temper.

"He does what he wants because he's used to doing what he wants," said McCauley, who suggested that Lloyd, 27, a Dorchester man who dated the sister of Hernandez's fiancee, knew more "than what he should have known," such as Hernandez's marijuana smoking, his late-night carousing and womanizing, and a Franklin apartment where Hernandez kissed his babysitter with Lloyd present two nights before the murder.

The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for a little more than an hour after Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh instructed them on the charges Hernandez is facing: murder, possession of ammunition without an FID card and illegally carrying a firearm outside a residence.

On the murder charge, jurors could convict Hernandez of either first- or second-degree murder if they believe he had the intent to kill Lloyd and was involved in the homicide. First-degree murder, which requires premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty, carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Second-degree murder, which also carries a life sentence, has the possibility of parole after 15 years served in prison.

In his closing arguments, Sultan accused investigators of targeting Hernandez from the very beginning, allegedly leaking his name to the media more than a week before his arrest. Sultan said prosecutors shoehorned evidence to fit their theory that Hernandez orchestrated the murder two days after he was angry with Lloyd for talking to other people in a Boston nightclub.

Consistent with the defense team's strategy throughout the two-month trial, Sultan attacked the police investigation as sloppy and unprofessional, from the way officers processed the crime scene to deciding what evidence to analyze and show the jury. Sultan stressed that a piece of chewed bubble gum that police found attached to a .45-caliber shell casing was never tested for DNA. The defense team had the gum tested, and an analyst determined it contained Hernandez's DNA.

The gum evidence is important because the defense says it can explain how Hernandez's DNA was found on the shell casing. Sultan showed the jury a picture of the gum attached to the shell casing.

"This picture tells you everything you need to know about this," Sultan said, suggesting that prosecution did not test the gum because it did not fit with their "presumption of guilt."

"They would do whatever they could do to accomplish their goal. That's scary. That's not science. That's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt," Sultan said.

However, McCauley said the evidence shows that Hernandez set a plan in motion to kill Lloyd. McCauley noted that Hernandez was in constant contact with Wallace and Ortiz in the hours before the homicide. Hernandez textd them during a Father’s Day dinner in Rhode Island and ordered them to drive up from Connecticut to meet him at his North Attleborough home, where they met up before leaving around 1 a.m. to pick up Lloyd in Dorchester.

McCauley showed surveillance video footage that he said proves Hernandez had a gun — allegedly a .45-caliber Glock pistol that has never been recovered — outside his house when he arrived home from Rhode Island, and that he carried the pistol with him through the living room, at one point switching the gun from his right to his left hand when he saw the babysitter on the couch.

Relying on “electronic witnesses” — cellphone tower records, phone calls, text messages and video surveillance — McCauley presented a timeline that even the defense team did not challenge: that Hernandez and his associates picked up Lloyd in Boston around 2:30 a.m. and drove him to the industrial park in North Attleborough, where Lloyd was murdered just before 3:30 a.m.

"What was the purpose of driving to that spot at that time?" said McCauley, who suggested there would have been no other purpose other than to kill Lloyd.

Sultan anticipated that statement by telling the jury that among the questions prosecutors failed to answer was why would Hernandez plan a murder less than a mile from his own home. As to the black object Hernandez is seen holding in his hand within 10 minutes of Lloyd's murder, Sultan said prosecutors never proved it was a gun, though he raised possibilities that Hernandez may have tried to take the murder weapon away from Ortiz or Lloyd.

"Did he arm himself, to protect himself, after what he had just seen at Corliss Landing?" Sultan asked, referring to the crime scene.

However, about 12 hours after the murder, surveillance video at Hernandez’s home shows him relaxing poolside with Wallace and Ortiz. At one point, Hernandez lets Wallace hold his 8-month-old daughter. Also, Shayanna Jenkins, Hernandez’s fiancee, brought them smoothies in the pool.

Hernandez later hugged and fist-bumped Ortiz and Wallace when they left his house. Meanwhile, Lloyd’s body was in the initial stages of decomposition a little less than a mile away.

"He was a real gentleman," said McCauley, who also ripped into Jenkins, who sat in the courtroom Tuesday, for following Hernandez's instructions to get rid of a box in the basement that may have contained the murder weapon. Jenkins said she threw the box in a Dumpster, but she claimed to not remember its location, and she also claimed not to recall why she withdrew $800 from an ATM on the same day.

McCauley told jurors to ignore testimony from Hernandez's cousin, Jennifer Mercado, who could not recall receiving text messages and phone calls from Hernandez after the murder. However, she testified in vivid detail about Ortiz and Wallace supposedly smoking PCP and acting "crazy" and "jittery" a few hours before the murder. McCauley told the jury not to "buy" the PCP testimony.

McCauley also rebutted the defense argument that Hernandez would not have killed Lloyd because they were good friends, noting that they rarely talked or socialized without their girlfriends present. The real nature of their relationship, McCauley said, was about smoking marijuana.

In addition, noting cell phone tower records and a dirt sample from the rented Nissan Altima Hernandez drove that night did not match dirt at the crime scene, McCauley said the prosecution believes Hernandez pulled over somewhere before going to the industrial park, an isolated area less than a mile from Hernandez’s home.

With Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward, fighting back tears in the courtroom, McCauley recreated the harrowing sequence of gunshots that Lloyd, who was shot at least five times, experienced. McCauley said Lloyd was shot in the car while he was in the backseat. McCauley noted that a shell casing was found underneath the driver’s seat. Hernandez was driving the vehicle, prosecutors said.

After getting out of the Altima, Lloyd was shot execution-style, with bullets fired into his arm, clavicle and back. He was then shot twice in the chest while he was already lying on the ground. Two bullet projectiles were later recovered in the dirt under where Lloyd’s body was found.

“He believed he could kill Odin Lloyd and nobody would ever know he was involved,” McCauley said.

The jury will resume deliberating Wednesday at Bristol County Superior Court.