Aaron Hernandez Guilty Of Murdering Uncle Odin

Nearly all of us grew up with that special uncle who was a hero in your eyes.

Odin Lloyd was the first born and the only son of three children.  His younger sisters and his mother Ursula Ward, were important and special to him as he was the man of the house growing up, and became that special uncle to all the kids of the family.

Today, a jury in Boston found Aaron Hernandez guilty of murdering uncle Odin Lloyd in the first degree.  Hernandez, the former New England Patriot tight end, did not deny the wealth of evidence that said he watched the death of Ursula's baby boy but intimates that he was not the trigger man of this crime.

In the eyes of the law,  everybody who attended the execution of Odin Lloyd is culpable to the crime of murder.  If Hernandez ordered and witnessed the murder, he is fully culpable in the eyes of the law and the eyes of the jury that convicted him.  In the eyes of the family of Lloyd, Uncle Odin was a special person that had a special place in the life of a family who can't understand why Uncle Odin is gone.  Hernandez may never admit to his crime, so understanding why it happened will be elusive.  Nothing about the WHY will change WHAT impact losing Odin will have on his close knit family. His smile was his signature, and he was known for declaring that, 'as long as he had life he would keep on smiling'.

Popular opinion is that loose lips sink ships and Lloyd was suspected of knowing too much regarding the upcoming double murder trial that Hernandez will face next.  When not blazing a trail up and down the NFL fields, Hernandez is a notorious Boston area hot head and a part time thug suspected of killing two other men over a spilled drink in the club. As an insider within the Hernandez circle, (Lloyd was dating the sister of Hernandez' fiance) smiling faced Odin simply got too close the tight lipped world that Hernandez pursued as a side gig.  Video evidence during the trial showed the fiance  of Hernandez disposing of a big trash bag with a box inside of it.  Prosecutors believed the murder weapon to be inside while the fiance claimed to be discarding a bag of marijuana.  Either answer says Hernandez was not living a life content with the wealth of sports stardom.

Upon his conviction, Hernandez struggled to keep his own tight lips shut as the shock of the moment evoked noteworthy responses from him. Like the baller he believes himself to be, Hernandez focused more on his game face than anything- even mouthing to the jury that they "got it wrong", representing some of the few words he's spoken during the course of a trial that was essentially his words against a pile of circumstantial evidence.

Based upon his reaction, Hernandez seemed to suspect the same thing that many legal experts expected as well.  The defense had presented a credible pathway towards a reasonable doubt exit for their client, but the jury was surprisingly unwilling to unlock that door.

In fact, in post trial interviews we discovered that jurors were finally given the background information of the double murder trial motive that they did not have throughout this trial. Apparently, Judge E. Susan Garsh was not willing to allow this murder trial to have ANY risk of mistrial, which included excluding any juror that already knew about the other case that Hernandez was facing.

Garsh even slapped down the prosecutions attempt to share evidence from the phone of Lloyd himself.  While feeling uneasy as he was heading off to his own execution, Lloyd sent a couple of messages to his sister explaining that he was in the company of "NFL", (presumably referring to Hernandez) "just so you know".  Judge Garsh ruled that these text messages did not automatically prove that Lloyd knew he would be killed, so she rejected them.  To the rational mind, these would be slam dunk inclusions, so their exclusion only added to the assumption that the week long jury deliberation would find Hernandez acquitted or free from a hung jury.

Had Hernandez chosen to snuff out the life of some evil heart street thug similar to himself, there may have never been a trial and almost certainly not a conviction.  The notion that money and intimidation have value in shady places is not a far fetched idea.  Hernandez, however, wasn't smart enough, rich enough or tough enough (too much gun play- not enough knuckle) to survive very long in the world he was trying to conquer. Eventually, someone would have returned the gun play on Hernandez because ignorance and arrogance force most thugs to slip up and kill the wrong person.

Like Uncle Odin. 

RIP Odin Lloyd.