Aaron Hernandez's Lawyer: Netflix 'Lied Directly to My Face'

From Men's Health

• Last week, Netflix released Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez.

• The documentary chronicles the life and suicide of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez.

• Hernandez's attorney, Jose Baez, was interviewed for the documentary, and now says Netflix lied to him

After Netflix released Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, a three-part documentary series chronicling the life, crimes, trial, and suicide of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, Hernandez's attorney, Jose Baez, spoke out against the streaming network. In an Instagram post, Baez claimed producers "lied directly to my face," and called the Netflix documentary a "money making scheme."

Hernandez had stood trial twice, once in 2015 for the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd, and again in 2017 for a separate murder charge.

Hernandez retained Baez for the second trial, a case involving the double-homicide of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, shot at a stoplight in Boston's South End in 2012.

The prosecution claimed that Hernandez, riding with Alexander Bradley, approached the stoplight in an adjacent vehicle and fired several shots into the car. Hernandez was apparently provoked after one of the men spilled a drink on him earlier that night at a club. Baez achieved an acquittal after a fierce cross-examination of Bradley, the prosecution's star witness, who Baez showed to be an untrustworthy, criminal source. Baez also questioned the prosecution's motive, which he found absurd given other accounts of Hernandez's disposition at the club.

Baez was interviewed for the Netflix documentary. He appears in the third episode, describing Hernandez's relationship with Bradley and the events of the second trial.

Baez recently told TMZ Sports, however, that he had agreed to interview with Netflix only if producers promised not to interview certain people about Hernandez's sexuality.

The topic of Hernandez's sexuality instead became one of the central issues of the Netflix series, which multiple times suggested his sexual identity as a reason for his alleged violent outbursts.

Baez posted on Instagram last week about the Netflix doc.

For the documentary, Netflix interviewed Dennis SanSoucie, Hernandez's high school friend and teammate who claimed he and Hernandez had sexual relations as teenagers.

After his suicide, rumors about Hernandez's sexuality suggested he may have committed suicide shortly after being outed on a morning radio show.

Baez rejects the idea that Hernandez's suicide was motivated by his sexuality, claiming that the suicide was instead caused by advanced stages of CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), a brain disease found in individuals who have experienced head trauma. (The disease is common among football players and can cause impulsivity and depressive symptoms.)

Baez also took to Instagram to comment on Hernandez's original 2015 conviction. Referring to the evidence the prosecution presented in the 2015 Odin Lloyd trial:

Those three men included Hernandez, Carlos Ortiz, and Ernest Wallace, all identified in the vehicle with Odin Lloyd the night of his death. (Hernandez's defense never questioned Hernandez's location that night; they conceded he was indeed at the crime scene, just not the individual who fired the .45 calibre that killed Lloyd.)

Hernandez was convicted of first degree murder, Baez observes, without evidence to suggest he pulled the trigger. (The murder weapon, the .45 calibre handgun, was never found.) Baez also alludes to the prosecution's lack of a satisfying motive; why would Hernandez, coming off a Super Bowl appearance and with no obvious grudge against Lloyd, execute him? These are the same questions asked in the Netflix documentary. The answer, Netflix suggests, could lie in Lloyd's knowledge of either Hernandez's sexuality or his involvement in the double homicide from 2012. Neither of these explanations, however, was presented at the Lloyd trial.

Baez maintains that Hernandez's sexuality should not be the explanatory factor for Hernandez's behavior and suicide.

But while the Netflix documentary did entertain numerous theories about Hernandez's sexual frustration as a cause for his violent behavior, there wasn't as much editorial effort connecting this fact to his suicide. (The series even acknowledged the inappropriate way in which Hernandez's sexual identity was discussed days before his death. ) Netflix seemed to suggest Hernandez's suicide was instead the result both of his CTE as well as Hernandez's belief that his death might erase his conviction, the result of Massachusetts' old "abatement" law, which has since been changed. (This latter motivation involved ensuring that his fiancee and daughter would be able to receive his NFL pension.)

Still, the documentary spent enough time on Hernandez's sexuality, interviewing persons Baez was ensured they would not, to anger the attorney. His Insta accusations are likely not the last words to be said over the controversial Netflix series.

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