Upon further review, which one?
Wrongful death suit against Aaron Hernandez to go forward
Hernandez’s next trial set for Dec. 1
Aaron Hernandez, Alexander Bradley facing new lawsuit
Aaron Hernandez charged with Florida shooting
Man who shipped guns to Hernandez gets two years
Hernandez appears on witness-intimidation charge
Speaking of intimidating witnesses:
"Perjury charges dropped against Aaron Hernandez’s fiancée" by Peter Schworm Globe Staff May 15, 2015
FALL RIVER — Prosecutors on Friday dropped perjury charges against Shayanna Jenkins, who was given immunity to testify against her fiance, former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, in his first-degree murder trial.
In a brief court hearing, Bristol Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh agreed to dismiss the charges at the request of prosecutors, who previously alleged that Jenkins lied 29 times to a grand jury investigating the June 2013 shooting death of Odin Lloyd, 27.
In February, Jenkins was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony. Last month, Hernandez was convicted of first-degree murder in Lloyd’s slaying and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Outside the courthouse, Jenkins appeared relieved and told reporters she was “feeling great.”
“I’m happy to start my future with my daughter and move forward,” she said. Hernandez is the father of her 2-year-old daughter. Asked if she and Hernandez were still a couple, Jenkins laughed and shrugged her shoulders noncommittally.
Her lawyer, Janice Bassil, criticized prosecutors for charging her with perjury to begin with, and said, “This is a long day coming.”
“Quite frankly, the charges never should have been brought. She made an honest mistake in the grand jury,’’ Bassil said. “The district attorney deliberately sought to prosecute her – and persecute her – to make sure that she became a witness for them.”
That's how AmeriKan JU$tice works.
Prosecutors alleged that Jenkins lied to the grand jury about conversations she had with Hernandez the day after Lloyd’s murder, and about discarding a box at his instruction.
Isn't that the height of hypocrisy? The state accusing others of lying.
At trial, Jenkins testified that Hernandez told her to remove a box from a downstairs storage room, and that she tossed it into a dumpster. She said she did not open the box, and that Hernandez did not tell her what was inside.
Prosecutors believe the box contained the murder weapon, which has not been found. Jenkins said she did not remember where she discarded the box amid the stress of Lloyd’s death.
“At that point I was nervous,” Jenkins said at trial. “There were a lot of things going on.”
She also told jurors she had once seen a gun in Hernandez’s house.
The Bristol district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case against Hernandez, said Jenkins’s testimony “concerned specific matters that were the subject of the perjury indictment.”
“As a result of her relevant testimony at trial, we could not in good faith continue the prosecution of this case,” a spokesman said.
When a reporter asked Jenkins if she thought she cooperated against Hernandez, Bassil answered on her behalf.
“She did what she had to do under the law,’’ Bassil said.
Separately, defense attorneys for Hernandez have asked Garsh to rule that there was not enough evidence to convict him of murder and illegal possession of a firearm, a routine step after a conviction.
In a 19-page motion, the defense claimed jurors convicted Hernandez based on “improper speculation, conjecture, and guesswork.’’
I had that feeling from the prosecutor's closing arguments.
Prosecutors “utterly failed to prove that Hernandez intentionally participated in the killing of Odin Lloyd and that he acted with malice,” the motion contended.
“While there was substantial evidence placing Hernandez at the scene where Lloyd was killed, there was no evidence, let alone proof beyond a reasonable doubt, about what, if anything, Hernandez actually did at that scene or agreed to do,” they wrote. “None of the evidence about actions undertaken by Hernandez twelve hours or more after the killing filled that void.”
There are no answers forthcoming.
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That was a real deflating outcome for the defiance and it was splashed all over the headlines. Gotta stand by your man in the face of the critics and get out in front of the injury to the head that has been dinged a couple of times. Maybe you know what I mean regarding the inflation of footballs that made one famous and placed them above the fold of great field generals.
Related:
"The “Free Tom Brady” rally, a grass-roots event that was organized on Facebook in response to the quarterback’s four-game suspension for his role in the Deflategate scandal."
It is so nice to see political activism on the part of the citizenry. They even received a surprise visitor!
Also see:
Tom Brady finds support at Best Buddies event
Julian Edelman teams with ‘Celebrate Israel’
Julian Edelman leads the Pops at Symphony Hall
Gronk leads drills for young football campers
Rob Gronkowski gets a buzz cut for One Mission
Related:
"Patriots coach Bill Belichick stopped into Davio’s Foxborough the other night with a few friends. We’re told Belichick was pleased to discover Davio’s stocks his favorite beer, Bud Light Lime."
Did you see who waited on him at the private party?
Here is candidate number 2:
"Deliberations drag on in 1979 case of missing boy Etan Patz" by Colleen Long Associated Press April 30, 2015
NEW YORK — Midway through the 10th day Wednesday, came a note: ‘‘We are unable to reach a unanimous decision.’’
A judge instructed the jury to keep deliberating and on went a waiting game befitting a notorious missing child case that’s already spanned decades. Looking worn, jurors went back behind closed doors to try to decide whether Pedro Hernandez is guilty of murder and kidnapping.
Etan vanished May 25, 1979, after leaving his family’s SoHo apartment to walk to the bus. The disappearance helped galvanize the modern-day missing-children’s movement, with his picture one of the first to appear on a milk carton.
After police received a fresh tip in 2012, Hernandez confessed in a lengthy videotape that he choked Etan in the basement of a New York City convenience store. Defense attorneys tried to convince the jury the defendant is mentally ill, that his confession was a delusion, and that a convicted pedophile, now jailed in Pennsylvania, was the more likely culprit.
Opening statements began at the end of January. The deliberations have helped push the trial well into spring — something the judge has alluded to when bidding farewell to jurors each evening.
‘‘Try to enjoy the outdoors and think about something else for a while,’’ he said when dismissing them Wednesday afternoon. They were excused early ahead of a lengthy rereading of both sides’ closing arguments, at their request....
????????????????
That's a weird thing to say!
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"Mistrial in 1979 Etan Patz case" New York Times May 09, 2015
NEW YORK — A judge declared a mistrial in the Etan Patz murder trial Friday after jurors said for a third time that they could not reach a verdict despite three weeks of deliberation, leaving unresolved a missing child case that has vexed the city for decades.
The jury of seven men and five women said they were firmly deadlocked in deciding the fate of Pedro Hernandez, 54, a disabled factory worker from New Jersey. The murder trial turned on a confession Hernandez gave 33 years after Etan, 6, vanished in 1979 while walking to a school bus stop in lower Manhattan.
The prosecution said the admission proved his guilt; the defense called it a fiction invented under police pressure.
Etan’s mother, Julie, had testified that it was the first day she had allowed her son to walk to the bus stop alone, and her nightmarish story came to embody the worst fears of American parents.
The mistrial ruling leaves District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. with a hard decision: Either pursue another costly trial with the same evidence that failed to convince a jury, or allow a man who confessed to murdering a child to go free.
Nothing about the questionable evidence.
Vance issued a statement saying that he believes Hernandez is guilty, but did not indicate on a retrial.
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"After NYC boy went missing, parenting was never the same" by Michael Wilson New York Times May 10, 2015
NEW YORK — The legacy of Etan Patz.
On Friday, a Manhattan jury concluded that it could not reach a verdict in the trial of Pedro Hernandez, who was charged with killing Etan on the basis of a confession his lawyers argued was a figment of an unstable mind.
The district attorney has not decided whether to retry Hernandez, but no verdict, nor lack of one, could change the impact the 6-year-old boy’s disappearance had on parenting. His abduction in 1979 transformed the experience of childhood for many boys and girls his age and set the mold for the sort of fathers and mothers they themselves would become.
He was not famous when he vanished, his family not a wealthy target of kidnappers seeking ransom. And that made the case all the more haunting in its randomness. An early police theory, that a lonely woman had snatched up the boy to raise as her own, in hindsight seems startlingly naïve, quaint. The disappearance of Etan Patz changed what parents feared.
“In some ways, it is the most important case, culturally,” said Paula S. Fass, a historian and author of the book “Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America,” published in 1997. “This case served as a wellspring of the idea that when little boys and little girls — but especially boys — were taken, that it was almost certainly by a pedophile.”
Statistically, abductions by strangers remain rare. The vast majority of abductors were relatives or people who knew the children.
But Etan’s was the first of a small number of cases extending over a generation, including those involving Adam Walsh and Amber Hagerman, that were rare but still saturated news coverage, creating the impression of an epidemic.
Say again?
Fass became a mother in New York City two years after Etan disappeared. “The reason I began researching this book is I became what I describe as one of the victims of that cultural craziness,” she said.
Pushed on us by the ma$$ media!
Children who grew up in the city at the time Etan disappeared remember the search, the police helicopters hovering over SoHo, the volunteers shouting his name in the street.
“Those posters were everywhere,” said Elizabeth Blake, 42, a copywriter.
Eddie Spaedh, 42, was a boy in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “The whole neighborhood changed.”
Well, not really.
********************
Joshua Parkhurst, a lawyer, was growing up nearby in Greenwich Village. “I remember sometimes you were on the school bus and you’d see a kid with blond hair,” he said. “And you said to your friend, ‘Is that Etan Patz?’ ” Others said they thought they saw Etan years later, when they were well into their 20s.
Most of these children grew up to become, by their own definition, helicopter parents. Spaedh, with an 11-year-old son, said he knows he acts more like his parents did after Etan disappeared than they did before that day.
They are even worse now.
“I understand that kids have to fall down and get dirty,” he said. “But if I can’t catch them, it’s on me.”
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"‘Free range’ parents cleared of child neglect in 1 case" Associated Press May 27, 2015
SILVER SPRING, Md. — A Maryland couple who were investigated for neglect after letting their two young children walk home alone from local parks have been cleared in one of two such cases.
The Washington Post reported that Child Protective Services has ruled out neglect in the case against Danielle and Alexander Meitiv for allowing their children, ages 10 and 6, to walk about a mile home in December.
The suburban Washington, D.C., parents have been investigated three times since October by the Montgomery County agency, a division of the state Department of Human Resources.
The agency has been monitoring the Meitivs for their advocacy of so-called ‘‘free-range’’ parenting, which encourages independence and exploration.
As long as it is not sexual.
They remain under investigation for neglect related to their children walking home from another park April 12. The children were held by police and Child Protective Services for more than five hours that day.
The Meitivs said they were surprised when they received the letter May 18 stating that neglect was ‘‘ruled out’’ in the December case.
‘‘It was an enormous relief and vindication,’’ Danielle Meitiv said. ‘‘Of course there’s no neglect here. There never was. There was never even a hint of it.’’
Print ended there.
The new Child Protective Services finding followed an appeal of the agency’s earlier decision holding the Meitivs responsible for ‘‘unsubstantiated’’ child neglect, a finding typically made when there is conflicting or insufficient information for a more definitive conclusion.
The letter didn’t indicate whether the agency has changed its approach more broadly toward children walking or playing on their own outdoors, or simply made a narrow decision related to one case. Department of Human Resources spokeswoman Paula Tolson wouldn’t discuss the Meitivs’ cases specifically, citing confidentiality rules.
Something we did with no thought long ago.
‘‘The process is that each case is looked at separately and the circumstances surrounding that case are investigated,’’ she said.
The agency has until mid-June to issue a written decision in the April case. The Meitivs said they hope the recent decision means they will be cleared in that case, too.
‘‘What we’re hoping this means is that they recognize we never should have been on their radar,’’ Danielle Meitiv said. ‘‘Nothing we have done should have triggered an investigation.’’
JU$Tus didn't abandoned them.
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What would you name your kids (how about Stephen or Nicole)?
Here is candidate number 3:
"Closing arguments made in security guard murder trial" by Evan Allen Globe Staff May 09, 2015
There was only one person angry enough at Maiqui Hernandez to murder him, said Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Edmond Zabin. Certainly, Zabin said, Hernandez had flaws — he was a bit of a hothead, he drank, and the night that he died, he used cocaine. But, Zabin said, he was no gangster, no criminal.
“He was a man with no enemies,” said Zabin. “The only one who had motive and opportunity to kill him was the man who showed up at that doorstep with a pistol in his hand, with malice in his heart, and a box of .357 ammunition in his pocket. That man, ladies and gentlemen: the defendant.”
Zabin spoke Friday during closing arguments of Suber’s murder trial in Suffolk Superior Court, where jurors are now deliberating whether Suber is guilty of killing Hernandez on May 3, 2013, and wounding a woman inside a Prentiss Street apartment Hernandez was visiting. Hernandez was a 35-year-old security guard at Harvard University and father to two daughters.
Suber’s lawyer, Eduardo Masferrer, delivered a passionate rebuttal of the evidence against his client, who he said was a man with a learning disability confused into giving conflicting statements during an interrogation.
Uh-oh.
Masferrer questioned the credibility of the prosecution’s main witness, disputed the identification of Suber, asked why there was no gunshot residue found on Suber’s hands, and pointed to discrepancies between the description given of the suspect and Suber’s appearance when he was arrested 10 minutes after the shooting.
“Look at what the evidence reveals. It reveals itself to you,” he told the jury. “Devone Suber is not guilty of murder.”
During two weeks of testimony, prosecutors presented their case that Suber, now 29, had an altercation with Hernandez when Hernandez denied him a cigarette. The two crossed paths again about two weeks later, prosecutors said, on May 2, and that confrontation was physical.
Instead of letting it go, prosecutors say, Suber returned in the early-morning hours of May 3 to the Mission Hill apartment where Hernandez was visiting friends and shot Hernandez to death, wounding another woman in the process.
About 10 minutes later, and “a football field” away from the shooting, police arrested Suber, Zabin said, and Suber had a box of .357 ammunition in his pocket with five cartridges missing. Suber told detectives he found the ammunition in Mattapan and that it was not his, Zabin said.
Zabin said that Hernandez’s close friend, Angel Delgado, who was the prosecution’s key witness, identified Suber, whom he had met before, as the shooter. The woman who was wounded, Zubin said, described Suber generally but did not pick him out of a photo array.
Suber was caught on video hours earlier wearing the black jacket witnesses described the killer wearing, though he was dressed differently when he was arrested, Zabin said. And the bullets he carried could have been fired by the murder weapon, Zabin said, though he conceded that experts could not prove they were the same bullets.
There was no gunshot residue on Suber’s hands, said Zabin, though he argued that could not prove he did not fire a weapon. When detectives asked Suber if there was a reason they might find gunshot residue before they tested him, Zabin said, Suber replied that he did not know.
“That may not be a confession, ladies and gentlemen, but it’s pretty close,” said Zabin.
But Masferrer said that the prosecution’s case was not enough to meet the burden of proof.
“Not even a little bit,” he told the jury. He pointed to inconsistencies in Delgado’s testimony: Delgado, he said, lied about Hernandez’s drinking and cocaine use the night he died and Delgado’s description of the shooting did not match what other witnesses said.
“Why lie? The truth reveals something else,” said Masferrer. “What’s the true story? I don’t know.”
But I do know where I won't be finding it.
--more--"
That was the first I ever saw of it -- and the last.
UPDATES:
Patriot Brandon Spikes’s car found after report of crash
Brandon Spikes released by Patriots
NDU: You can check through the names yourself because as of 8 a.m. this morning, the purchased pos remains pristine of pen marks. I scanned, I saw, I said sick of it.
FURTHER UPDATES:
Brandon Spikes charged in Foxborough crash
"Rights of ‘free-range’ parents clarified in Maryland" Associated Press June 13, 2015
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — After an outcry over one family’s ‘‘free-range’’ parenting case, officials on Friday clarified the state’s policy on how authorities handle cases of children walking or playing alone outdoors, saying the state should not investigate unless youths are harmed or face substantial risk of harm.
The mother in that case, which garnered international attention, called the clarification an important first step in reinforcing the rights of parents to choose how they wish to raise their children.
The updated policy directive about the involvement of Child Protective Services, first reported by The Washington Post, comes after the state agency ruled out neglect in the first of two cases against Danielle and Alexander Meitiv.
The Meitivs had allowed their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter to walk home from a park in December.
Police stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them, a case that prompted wide debate about so-called ‘‘free-range’’ parenting.
Makes the kids seem like livestock, doesn't it?
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Also see:
Aaron Hernandez lawyer says juror may have been ‘untruthful’
Aaron Hernandez’s lawyers press judge to toss murder conviction
Hernandez codefendants appear in court
First Odin Lloyd scholarship awarded
Hernandez was properly convicted in 2013 slaying, judge rules
He should have just pleaded guilty.
Prosecutors spent $462,000 on Aaron Hernandez prosecution
Maybe that will make you angry enough to do what I suggest (with tongue firmly planted in cheek).
Hernandez had ‘explicit’ relationship with tipster, prosecutors say
Judge wants sworn statement from tipster in Aaron Hernandez case
Aaron Hernandez’s home to be sold in civil suit
Hernandez request to question tipster under oath approved
Prosecutors grant immunity to Aaron Hernandez’s former friend
State drops prosecution of Hernandez cousin battling cancer
Aaron Hernandez’s friend loses bid to dismiss indictment
Judge finds Hernandez tipster unreliable
Aaron Hernandez’s prosecutor accuses defense of being untruthful
R.I. dealership seeks return of Aaron Hernandez’s vehicle
