Former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez is a convicted murderer currently serving a life sentence. But he's still facing double-murder charges related to a separate incident, and he has hired Casey Anthony's lawyer to defend him.
Orlando attorney Jose Baez famously won an acquittal for Anthony, who was on trial for killing her 2-year-old daughter. And now Baez will represent Hernandez, who two years ago pleaded not guilty to shooting and killing Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado.
"We understand that numerous reports of our client's alleged activity have been published, but we ask the public to afford Mr. Hernandez the presumption of innocence and let the facts unfold in a court of law," Baez said in a statement Wednesday.
In addition to Baez, Hernandez's defense team will also include Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan and New York City lawyer Alex Spiro, reports the Associated Press.
Hernandez has been in jail, on trial, or in prison since June 2013, when he was arrested and charged in the shooting death of Odin Lloyd. In March, his 5,647-square-foot home in North Attleborough, Mass., was put on the market for $1.49 million after a judge ruled the property could be sold to help cover Hernandez's legal costs.
On the football field, Hernandez was considered a first-round talent, but off-field concerns saw him slide into the fourth round where the Patriots selected him in 2010. In April of that year, a week before the Patriots drafted him, Hernandez sent the organization this letter in the hopes of clearing up any concerns about his alleged marijuana use while he was at the University of Florida.
Hernandez sounded just as sincere several years later, shortly after the Patriots signed him to a $40 million contract extension.
"This is a place that, not only did it change my future from them paying me, but it changed me as a person," Hernandez told Comcast Sportsnet at the time, "because you can't come [to the Patriots] and act reckless and do your own stuff. That was one of the reasons that I came here -- might've acted the way I wanted to act. But you get changed by Bill Belichick's way. And you get changed by the Patriots way. And now that I'm a Patriot, I have to start living like one and making the right decisions for them."
After Hernandez was arrested in June 2013, Patriots owner Robert Kraft said the organization was "duped" by the tight end.
"No one in our organization was aware of any of these kind of connections," Kraft said at the time. "If [Hernandez shooting Lloyd is] true, I'm just shocked. Our whole organization has been duped."