Latest / Both Things Are True Crime / Aaron Hernandez Acquitted: The Witness With an Immunity Deal (Part 2 of 3)
Transcript
- cure ep2 daniel de abreu safiro furtado edited: Daniel Day Abreu and Safri Fortado grew up together in Cape Verde in the islands off the coast of West Africa. And they went to school together. They served in the military there together. Then they both came to Boston and both of them landed in Dorchester. And Daniel was 29. Back home. He had been a police officer and his family said he dreamed of being a Boston police officer. And Safreo was 28. In Boston, both of them worked overnight cleaning offices. And on Sunday night in july twenty and twelve, they went out in Boston, and before that night was over, both of them had been shot dead at a red light. For almost a year there was no name at all, and then the name that finally surfaced belonged to the most famous man who had been in the club that night. And from that moment on, most of the country told this story as if it were about him. Well This episode is about them. He's in it because the trial is in it, but they come first. So let's talk about it. The club is called Cure Lounge and it's on Tremont Street in Boston Theaters District. Daniel and Cifreo got there with friends around 12 30 in the morning on Monday, July 16, 2012. And Daniel had borrowed his sister's BMW. A little before 2 30, the BMW pulls out of a parking garage with five men in it. Daniel is driving. Cifreo is in the front passenger seat. They stop at a red light in the south end, and it's about 2 30. An SUV pulls up beside them and someone inside it fires inside the BMW. And Daniel is shot in the chest, Safraya was shot in the head, and one of the men in the back, Ferrer, is shot in the arm, and the other two run. And five years later, two of the men from that car told a jury what they remembered. Ferrer said he heard someone yell before the shots, and afterwards he told Daniel to keep strong. And Rachid's Gomez Sanchez said he told them, Danny, I'm here, ma'am. Please don't die. And police put out what they had. We're looking for a gray SUV with Rhode Island plates. And some of the coverage tied them to gangs. It took the district attorney to just plainly say in 2014, neither of them were involved in gangs, guns, or violent crime. And I I think about how fast that word got attached to two men who cleaned offices for a living. Then nothing. Their families buried them at Mount. Pope Cemetery side by side, no arrest, no suspect, anyone would name. And here's what was happening in another part of the world while that case sat. A month after the shooting, on August 27, 2012, the New England Patriots signed their tight end Aaron Hernandez to a five-year extension worth up to 40 million dollars. I talked about that number in episode one. When putting those facts next to each other on purpose, on one side, two families with no answers on the other side, $40 million. So around February 13, 2013, a man named Alexander Bradley is found just before seven in the morning in an alley at a business in Rivera Beach, Florida. And he has been shot in the face and he has lost his right eye. Now, Bradley had been a friend of Aaron Hernandez, and later in his lawsuit, he said the two of them had been at a strip club in Miami that night. Later, Bradley tells the jury that at first he told someone two black men had shot him. But that is not what he said later. Later, when he sued Aaron Hernandez in federal court in Florida, he claimed that Hernandez was actually the one that shot him. Now, that lawsuit settled in February 2016 and the terms are never made public. But Aaron Hernandez was never convicted of shooting Alexander Bradley. Hold on to Bradley though, because he's actually gonna be the whole case. So in June 2013, Odin Lloyd's body, remember, was found on June 17th, and within days, Aaron Hernandez is the center of the Lloyd investigation. That was episode one. Well, on June 22nd, five days after Odin was found, a security supervisor at a Boston nightclub calls police with a tip about the 2012 shooting. And so the way the AP quoted him was that someone accidentally spilled the beans in front of me. And so surveillance video, it ends up putting Hernandez inside the same club as Daniel and Sefreo that night in July. So then the car. During the Lloyd search, police in Bristol, Connecticut, Hernandez's hometown, found a silver Toyota forerunner in a garage at his uncle's house on Lake Avenue. And it was told on June twenty-eighth, twenty thirteen, and the AP described it as being covered in dust and cobwebs with a dead battery. And it was registered to a Rhode Island company that had given it to him in exchange for promotional appearances. So Rhode Island plates, nearly a year and a garage. And when the news broke that summer that investigators were looking at the South End again, it landed on the families all over again. Sefreo's mother, Maria. She told a reporter, I haven't slept since this was brought up again. And his cousin, Isadora, said there is a feeling of hope that justice will be served. And you know what? That's what a cold case does. It doesn't stay cold for the family. Every time it moves, they're back at the red light. And so the gun, the thirty-eight revolver, turns up later. The district attorney's office said it's recovered from someone with connections to Hernandez. Now, none of that is a conviction, but it's what put his name on a case that had gone almost a year. without one. Now before any indictment comes down, Alexander Bradley is in trouble of his own. And on the night of February 2nd, Super Bowl Sunday, outside a nightclub in Hartford, Connecticut, he was shot in the leg and then fired pause. All right, I'm back picking it up from card fifteen. And before the indictment came down, Alexander Bradley was in trouble of his own. So on the night of February 2nd, 2014, Super Bowl Sunday, outside a nightclub in Hartford, Connecticut, he is shot in the leg and then fired at the front of the club. Reedo again. Before the indictment comes down, Alexander Bradley actually gets in some trouble of his own. So on the night of February the 2nd, 2014, this is Super Bowl Sunday. They are outside a nightclub in Hartford, Connecticut, right? And he gets shot in the leg and then he fires. At the front of the club. And later he pleads no contest to charges that included illegal gun possession and reckless endangerment till he gets five years. So remember that the next time somebody tells you who the reliable witness in this case was. And by then, he had already gone in front of the Boston grand jury about the South End. And pause again. So May 15, 2014, a Suffolk County Grand Jury, they indict Aaron Hernandez. Two counts of first-degree murder, one for Daniel. And one for Sefreo, and three counts of armed assault with the intent to murder for three men in the back seat. So assault and battery with a dangerous weapon for Freyer's arm and unlawful possession of that 38 caliber. And district attorney Dan Connolly said for us, this case was never about Aaron Hernandez. And he said that the two men were stalked, ambushed, and senselessly murdered. He also described it as a chance encounter because Hernandez and the another man. walked into the club at the same time as Daniel and Severo's group and Connolly said that there was no evidence that the groups knew each other. Unbeknownst to them, he said, Hernandez followed behind him, traveling in a SUV. And that same day, Hernandez's cousin, Tanya Singleton, was charged with criminal contempt for refusing to testify to that grand jury, even though she had already been given immunity. And that's the other side immunity. Because normally You can refuse to answer a question that could incriminate you, but once a judge orders that you can't be prosecutor over what you're about to be forced to testify about, that reasoning is gone, and the refusing anyway can now become its own crime. So Daniel's father, Ernesto Abreyu, he talks to a reporter that day and he says he died for nothing and is killing me, is killing me. And then two weeks later, on May 28th, Aaron Hernandez pleads not guilty, and at that arraignment, prosecutor Patrick Hagan, he gave the government's version of why. Because he and Daniel had accidentally bumped into Hernandez in the club, smiled, and didn't apologize, and that Hernandez had grown convinced people were testing, trying, or otherwise disrespecting him. And now listen, that's the state's theory, not a finding, but it's the theory that the Commonwealth carried for about three years. And then on April 15th, 2015. A different jury convicted Aaron Hernandez of murdering Odin Lloyd and he got life without parole. Remember that's how episode one ended. So by the time the Boston case moved, the man charged in it was already serving life. So then on May 8, 2015, the grand jury of Boston added one more charge. Witness intimidation tied to the shooting of Alexander Bradley. So the statute for that is chapter two sixty-eight, section thirteen B. Same format I talked about in episode one, chapter, then section, and it covers someone who threatens attempts or causes physical, emotional, or economic injury to a witness, intending to get in the way of a case. And at the time, it carried up to 10 years. And the state's theory was that Bradley, what would got him shot afterwards, is he made a remark about the South End killings. So then in August 2015, a filing in Bradley's Florida lawsuit made something public that the district attorney's office couldn't confirm. Bradley had an immunity agreement for the 2012 shooting. So in Mass, Massachusetts, immunity is apparently a court order. A judge orders that you can't be prosecuted over what you're forced to testify about. And in Massachusetts, there's a second rule attached, and almost nobody outside the courthouse probably even knows it. But I have learned it, and it is chapter two thirty three, section twenty I. No defendant in any criminal proceedings shall be convicted solely, solely on the testimony of a witness who had been given immunity. So think about that again, but with the case in your head, okay, this case, because the state's eyewitness to the shooting would turn out to be the man in the driver's seat. And the law says his word alone can't convict anybody. So the state needed more than Bradley. Part of what they brought was on. Aaron Hernandez's body. At a hearing in December 2016, Hagen described the tattoos. One was a revolver cylinder with five rounds and one empty chamber, which the state said matched the five shots fired into the BMW. Another was a semi-automatic pistol with one spint casting and smoke, which the state tied to the single shot that hit Bradley. And also, he has God forgives written backwards, and Hagen called that. Tattoo in admission by Mr. Hernandez. Now, his lawyer, Ronald Sullivan, he said it was ranked speculation. I'm just reporting the record, okay? And then on January 10th, 2017, Judge Jeffrey Locke ruled that the jury could hear about the two gun tattoos. He wrote that they could be viewed as constituting an implied admission. In that same ruling, he did something just as big that got less attention. He kept the Lloyd conviction away from the jury. Because you see, that's one of the oldest rules in a criminal courtroom. You can't prove a man did this by showing he did something else. And the jury in Boston were going to decide whether the Commonwealth proved this shooting on this night or whether he had been convicted of a different murder in a different county two years earlier was not their question. Everybody outside that courtroom knew anyway. Sixteen people inside it were supposed to decide like they didn't. So jury selection starts. On February 14th, 2017, and by February 27th, they have now seated 16 people. Four of them are alternatives. And at the defense table is Jose Baez, the same lawyer who got Casey Anthony acquitted of murder in 2011 with Ronald Sullivan and George. And for the Commonwealth, we have first assistant district attorney Patrick Hagen. And listen, if you didn't hear the Casey Anthony set, here is who he is from the public record. He's of Puerto Rican descent, raised in the Bronx and South Florida. By a single mother. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade. He got married. He became a father at 17. He got his GED. He gets into the Navy. Then he gets his law degree from St. Thomas in nineteen ninety-seven. He was originally denied admission to the Florida bar. And in two thousand, the Florida Supreme Court upheld that decision in an order that pointed to his finances and what it called a total lack of respect for the legal system. However, he did w his work for five years as a paralegal and Five years later in two thousand and five, he gets in. And by two thousand seventeen, he was the lawyer people called when the whole country had already decided. Latasha stalks, she tried to call him. Jose Bayer said, Do do do. Jose Bayer said, Girl, don't call me. Don't call me. Don't say my name. He said, He he Jose Bayas told his girls, he said, get on Twitter. Can you get on the can you get on the Twitter? Is it Twitter or acts these days? whatever it is, can you let them know I don't know this lady. This lady don't know me. I ain't representing her. but I digress. so March the first happens, right? And these are the opening statements. And Hagen says by pure coincidence, those two worlds collided. And he tells the jury Daniel smiled at Hernandez, and that smile was a sign of disrespect. And Aaron Hernandez was furious. And he saw the defense coming, that they would put Alexander Bradley on trial. He said, That's fine. Now, Bayer stood up and gave them a different case entirely. As he all Ways does. I swear, if you're going up against Jose Baez, you I think you really need to let no theory go unlooked at. Okay? Like, don't let any theory go without a thought from you as well, okay? Because he will surely come up to you with the plot twist. With I I wanna start calling I need I wanna see if I can find some more of his cases that I can talk about. Because honestly, like Jose Baez, my gosh, like I don't know what to say about this man. I love him, but I hate because I I love him. I hate who he defends, so I've been I feel so strongly about that. Anyway, I digress. So Baya stands up and gives him a different case entirely. Baeas says this did not happen over a spilled drink. This happened over a drug deal. And so he tells the Commonwealth that He had made a deal with the devil, the devil being the witness with immunity, and that the defense theory from the day, from the first day to the last, was that Alexander Bradley was the shooter and then it was about drugs. So March the eighth happened. And Aquilino Ferry and Ray Fadesh, Gomez, Sanchez, they both take the stand. And these are the two men who were in the BNW that night. And they tell the jury about the red light, the shots, Daniel, and neither of them identifies Aaron Hernandez as the shooter. And then a moment that almost ended the trial, Gomez looks and said the shooter looked just like him. And so the defense moved for a mistrial. And a mistrial is a judge stopping the trial because something happened that a jury can't unhear. And it is honestly the most drastic thing a judge can do in the middle of trial because it means starting over. But Locke didn't use it. He told the jury instead that your Sanchez did not identify anyone as the perpetrator and the trial kept going. So that same week, Baez used some of the surviving passenger social media to suggest gang ties. And Locke stopped him. And he's like, Listen, you can't just throw things out that'll simply smear a witness, okay? And you remember from part one. Huh? The word that got attached to these men in the first coverage, five years later, it comes back and from the defense table, this time aimed at a man who survived that car. And the judge said, No, you don't get to throw that word at someone without proof, Jose. Stop. You ain't slick. Even though you are slick. And so then a week later, David Nelson, he was a tattoo artist. He was in court. They even brought his tattoo artist. And so he testifies that in March 2013, Hernandez asked him for a revolver signaler with five bullets and One empty chamber, and that God forgives went on backwards. And so Nelson had first told the police he wasn't sure Hernandez specified that number. And so at a hearing outside the jury's presence, George he called him a liar. Lockheed, he let him testify anyway. And then when Nelson told the jury, Baez cross-examines him. And so March 20th, 2017, Xander Bradley takes the stand under immunity and he testifies for. At least four straight days. And on direct, he told the jury he was driving the SUV and Hernandez fired from the passenger seat. And he says that he heard five shots, followed by three or four clicks. And then he tells her, he said that Hernandez told him, I got one in the head, one in the chest, and then don't say nothing. And he told them about Florida too. That he woke up to Hernandez pointing a gun in his face and he omitted what he wanted after he lost his eye. His words were I wanted Mr. Hernandez's life. And so the jury also see text that he sent Hernandez after Florida. You left me with one eye and a lot of head trauma. And he demanded 1.3 million. Then Baez gets him. And so Bradley admits that he's been selling drugs for about 17 years, that he was serving five years for the Hartford shooting. Baez plays a jailhouse call from before the grand jury where Bradley didn't know anything about the South End shootings, and Bradley testified that he lied on that call because he was scarred. And so he tells the police. That there were about six shots, but on the stand it was five. And so Bradley calls this a discrepancy a mistake. And then by the end of the trial, the jury has now heard three different pictures of where the shots came from. When the indictment comes down in 2014, the district attorneys had the shooter fired from their driver's side of the SUV. And Aquillo. Ferrer had told the police the shots came from the SUV's rear passenger seat. And then Bradley, the man the state put on the stand, said he was the one driving Hernandez fire from the front passenger seat. So what we gonna do? Because none of that proves who pulled the trigger. And that's the point. Because when the people closest to a shooting can't put the gun in the same seat, a jury has room to doubt. And the law says the doubt goes to the defendant. And then two lines. I just personally believe, I got no proof, but I personally believe it decided the case. Bayas says, So your memory gets better with time, right? Bradley says, yes, it does. Absolutely. And so Bias calls the immunity to deal the deal of a lifetime. He asked Bradley, who are you really? At one point he said out loud, because you're a killer. And that's not cross examination as a performance. That is a lawyer making a jury feel in their stomach with chapter 230. three section twenty I I think already says on paper. So six days later, the prosecution rests on April the third. The defense, they rest two days later. Aaron Hernandez did not testify. Now you heard in the KC part three, right? About like what can't be held against the defendant. Jury's not allowed to read into anything a man is staying in his seat. All right. So on April the sixth, closings, Hagen talks. And he says, you know who the killer is. And he says that killer wanted his victim to see it coming. So then Baez calls Bradley, the state's three-legged pony. I hate Baez, okay? I love to hate him, don't you? Don't you love to hate him? I love to hate him. But his test, he said Bradley's testimony was riddled with lies. And so then the jury they get the case on April the 7th. And on the very first day, the juror sent out a question. They wanted to know whether immunized testimony needed corroboration and whether something else had to back Bradley up. So Lockheed answers as the AP reported it. He said they should not solely rely on the testimony of an immunized witness. And that's the 20I rule coming right back out of the deliberation room on day one. So the jury they go straight to the exact spot that the whole case was standing on and they deliberate for six days. April 14th, 2017, not guilty of the murder of Sofrio Fortado. Not guilty of the murder of Daniel De Abreu. Not guilty on the three counts of armed assault with intent to murder for Aquino Freire, Rey Chadis, Gomez Sanchez, and Gerson Lopez. Not guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, not guilty of witness intimidation, guilty of one thing, unlawful possession of a firearm. That's chapter two hundred sixty-nine, section ten sub A. Knowingly possessing a gun without a license, two and a half to five years. Locke gave him four to five. On top of the sentence, he was already serving for Odin. It was added on at the end of a sentence with no end. So the Nafour woman, Lindsay Stringer, she reads a short statement for the jury and it says, We based our decision on the evidence presented and the law. And she said they had heard more than 70 witnesses and seen 380 exhibits. And Baez wasn't there to hear it. He actually ended up missing the verdict because he had a medical issue. But in the courtroom, one of the victims' relatives, she shouts and she's like, He got away with murder. And of course, everyone's in tears and they're just so upset. And Dan Connolly, he calls Daniel and Sofrio to hardworking, humble, Cape Verdian immigrants. And he said, Our theory of the case stands, Ronald Sullivan for the defense, and the case state's case was smoke and mirrors. And here's the sentence I think to carry out of this episode and into the next case where the state star witness got a deal. Immunity buys the state of witness, but it doesn't buy the jury's belief. Listen, Aaron Hernandez was acquitted of killing Daniel and Sufreo. And every time the show says his name next to theirs, I feel like that word goes with it. Now, y'all know I would do this part. This part is just me. All this is my opinion. I'm gonna say all of it because my view on this case isn't just one thing. Listen, I think he did it. I think the tattoos, the car in the garage, and the timing are a lot. And I think the jury was right. Those two sentences don't fight each other. The Commonwealth built its case on a man who had been shot in the face, who wanted, in his words, Mr. Hernandez's life and who sold drugs for 17 years and who was serving time for a shooting at a nightclub and who got immunity. Massachusetts law says you cannot convict on that man alone. And the jury they asked about that law on day one and they did their job. And I feel like the state handed them a witness nobody could really lean their full weight on. And then them to lean it actually reminds me of Heyman Lee's case with gay in that case. But what bothers me the most kind of is in the verdict is that these two men went to school together, served together, crossed an ocean together and cleaned offices overnight in Boston and it just became a subplot too. Like when you read most of what was written about this case, they're the victims in the second Aaron Hernandez trial. They're the double murder. They're a detail and a football player's downfall. Hell no They were Daniel and Sofrio, okay? One of them wanted to be a cop in his new city. And instead, they're buried next to each other. That's who this was about. And I'm not letting anybody think it's about anything else on this show, at least. Then there's Jose Baez, okay? Because I hate who he gets off and he's very good at his job. Watching him work is part of why I'm going back to school, okay? All of those are true, okay? And none of them makes the other smaller because look at what he did with Bradley, he didn't have to prove who the shooter was. He had to show 12 people that the only man saying who the shooter was couldn't carry it. And that is what a defense lawyer is for. So here are two sentences, and I'm not about to pick one. Two men who did nothing but stop at a red light were shot dead. And the man the state said did it was acquitted of every count that had their names on it. And that acquittal. Was the law doing exactly what Massachusetts wrote it to do in my opinion? Refusing to send someone away on the word of a man who had every reason to say it. So even though I have probably unfortunately mispronounced their names multiple times, we're gonna say them, right? Cause they're important. Daniel De Abreu Safrio Fortado. And he didn't walk anywhere. He was still serving life for Odin Lloyd, and he went back to Susa Barnowski. Correctional center that day, Connolly passed along with one of the victim relatives said. At least he's not walking out the door today. Five years later, five days later, on April 19th, 2017, Aaron Hernandez died by unaliving in his cell. His appeal in the Lloyd case wasn't finished, and under an old Massachusetts rule. That actually meant that his murder conviction for Odin could be erased. So episode three is about what happened to that conviction and to that rule.