National Football League

Aaron Hernandez trial: Defense attacks testimony of Glock expert

Published Mar. 12, 2015 11:31 a.m. ET

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FALL RIVER, Mass.

Aaron Hernandez’s attorneys spent Thursday attacking an official from Austrian gun-maker Glock who concluded the former NFL star is holding one of his company’s pistols in surveillance camera images captured just minutes after Odin Lloyd’s murder.

The results were mixed.

Judge E. Susan Garsh, for example, denied a last-ditch effort to have Kyle Aspinwall’s testimony stricken from the record, but she did agree that the jury would be told to disregard his findings in a few of the photographs.

And while defense attorney James Sultan got Aspinwall to acknowledge that he had no way of knowing whether the object in Hernandez’s hands was a working gun, he also saw the Glock district sales manager refuse to say that an object in an alleged accomplice’s hands was a gun.

Aspinwall, a former small-town New Hampshire police chief, made the identification of Hernandez from videos and still photographs of him captured by his home surveillance system. Some of the images were taken around 3:30 a.m. on June 17, 2013 — fewer than than 10 minutes after Lloyd was gunned down in a field less than a mile away.

Prosecutors have alleged that Lloyd was killed with a .45-caliber Glock Model 21.

Defense attorneys first tried to block Aspinwall’s testimony in a motion several weeks ago. Then they tried again Wednesday before Garsh ruled that he could offer his opinion.

And Thursday, Sultan argued that prosecutors had sandbagged the defense by failing to turn over information about the opinion he was going to offer, which in most cases was based on the unique curvature of the “backstrap” on Glock pistols. In some of the photos, Aspinwall identified other parts he said were unique to Glocks.

Sultan cried foul, saying that information turned over to the defense included only that his opinion was based on the design of the backstrap. Garsh finally ruled that the jury should disregard any of his findings based on anything but the backstrap.

Sultan also attacked Aspinwall’s credentials, noting that his entire experience with Glock is less than two years and that he was a police chief in a department with six officers, including him.

Sultan, repeatedly referring to the images from Hernandez’s home surveillance system as “grainy videos and still photographs,” suggested that Aspinwall’s opinion was the result of prodding by prosecutors.

“I think they wanted me to render an opinion as to whether or not it was a Glock,” Aspinwall said at one point.

Sultan pushed, asking whether he knew that prosecutors were hoping he would reach that conclusion.

“Yes, I believe they were hoping that I could render that opinion, yes,” Aspinwall said.

As Sultan peppered him with questions — whether he wrote a report, whether he shared his opinions with defense attorneys before the trial — Aspinwall grew defiant, answering “I wasn’t asked to” each time.

Prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez, angry with Lloyd after a dispute at a nightclub, “orchestrated” his murder, which was carried out with a .45-caliber Glock pistol.

The murder weapon has not been found.

Prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez arranged to meet Lloyd and at the same time summoned two associates, Ernest Wallace Jr. and Carlos Ortiz, from Bristol, Conn., to his home in North Attleboro, Mass., late the night of June 16, 2013. From there, the trio allegedly set out for Boston — roughly an hour’s drive — at about 1:10 a.m. on June 17.

After picking up Lloyd in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, Hernandez allegedly drove the group back to North Attleboro, pulling into a secluded area in an industrial park less than a mile from the player’s mansion.

Hernandez faces one count of murder and two firearms charges in the slaying of Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-pro football player who was dating Shaneah Jenkins, the sister of Hernandez's fiancee.

Prosecutors have not said who they believe fired the fatal shots, and Ortiz and Wallace also have been charged with murder and will be tried separately. Under a Massachusetts law often referred to as “joint venture,” a person can be convicted of murder even if someone else carried out the actual killing. To prove that, prosecutors would have to convince the jury that Hernandez knowingly participated in the killing and did so with intent.

Sultan also showed numerous photos of Hernandez, Wallace and Ortiz back at the player’s house after the killing, asking Aspinwall whether he saw an object in Ortiz’s hands. Aspinwall acknowledged that he did, but he also said repeatedly it didn’t look to him like a gun.

In other pictures he acknowledged that Hernandez appeared to be holding an iPad or other electronic device.

But prosecutor Patrick Bomberg rose when he got the chance to question Aspinwall a second time and played a frame-by-frame section of the video showing Hernandez at the top of his basement stairs, just after 3:30 a.m. on June 17, 2013, holding what the Glock official said was one of the company’s guns.

Jurors ultimately will decide how much weight to give Aspinwall’s testimony, but he spent nearly six hours on the stand — a sign that both sides consider him a key witness.

Outside the courtroom, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied part of an emergency appeal filed by prosecutors that sought to overturn two of Judge Garsh’s rulings that blocked the testimony of a man who alleged that Hernandez had a gun in California two months before the killing and the testimony of another man who alleged that Hernandez shot him in February 2013 in Florida.

The court ruled that Garsh made no error when she blocked the testimony of the man who was with Hernandez in California, Robert Paradis. It has not yet ruled on the appeal with respect to the other man, Alexander Bradley.

Hernandez has separately been indicted on multiple murder and assault charges in a July 16, 2012, shooting in South Boston that left two men dead and another wounded.

In the Boston killings, prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez became enraged after a man bumped him on a nightclub dance floor, spilling his drink, and failed to apologize. They alleged that Hernandez later followed the man and his friends as they drove away from the club, then pulled up next to their car at a stoplight and opened fire with a .38-caliber revolver, killing Daniel De Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, and wounding another man.

That trial originally was scheduled to begin May 28, but the judge there indicated recently he would push it back given the anticipated length of the trial in the Lloyd case. No new trial date has been set.

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