BOSTON — Former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez was back in court Tuesday for another pretrial hearing ahead of his double murder trial in connection with a drive-by shooting in Boston in 2012, but his attorneys spent the day trying to throw out some of the prosecution’s tactics.
Hernandez is charged with killing 29-year-old Daniel de Abreu and 28-year-old Safiro Furtado. Prosecutors say the former football star killed the men after one of them bumped into him at a nightclub earlier. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors said at a hearing Tuesday that tattoos Hernandez had done soon after the men were killed link him to the slayings. According to the Boston Globe, there are two tattoos that link him, both of which were done in 2013.
One tattoo shows a revolver with five bullets in the chamber and one missing, which prosecutors said represent the five shots fired during the shooting of de Abreu and Furtado. Nearby he has a tattoo that says “god forgives” in mirror image. The second related tattoo was a semi-automatic handgun with a spent shell casing and a puff of smoke, which prosecutors say is exactly what happened to Alexander Bradley, the witness to the double murder that Hernandez allegedly shot as an attempt to silence him.
They also said text messages he sent to Brian Murphy, his agent, also link him to the crime.
Hernandez’s attorneys don’t want jurors to hear about his tattoos or text messages, and they argue the tattoos are irrelevant and the texts are protected by attorney-client privilege.
The judge did not rule either way.
The trial is scheduled to start Feb. 13.
Hernandez already is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 2013 shooting death of Odin Lloyd, his fiancee’s sister’s boyfriend.
At a hearing earlier this month, a judge ruled that ballistics evidence and testimony by firearms experts may be presented at trial over the objections of the defense. Also earlier this month, a witness who was in the car with de Abreu and Furtado but survived identified Hernandez as the shooter.
