Omar's Wacky Neighbor said:
Live in court right now:
http://abcnews.go.com/live?stream=4
"Aaron Hernandez in Court: Lawyers Ask to Drop Charges"
Only part I've caught is defense claim that
murders of Bradley and Ortiz were not similar enough to be consider "signature crimes".
Discussion of if Defense should have access to the original HDD of security tapes, instead of just being given CDs of the content.
Rovin Romine said:
In a worst-case scenario for AH, the state might be able to refer to both cases during the prosecution of either case. (Requires special circumstances and a special motion for permission to do so.) If such a motion is made and granted, it further drives down AH's chances.
Didn't catch the broadcast, but the state is seeking to introduce the facts of one murder in the other murder trial.
The normal rule is you try each crime separately in a vacuum (unless the crimes were all committed in a string or at the same time). The prosecutor is there to try the crime, not the person. The suggestion that the defendant is a bad person or is a criminal or has acted badly before is considered to be
highly prejudicial in terms of inappropriately swaying the jury, and is often referred to as a "propensity" issue. The aversion to this kind of "he's a bad person" evidence is so strong that normally the prosecutor can't even have their witnesses refer to prior "bad acts" (i.e., situations that were not convictions, but imply that the person on trial is a criminal or untrustworthy.) The policy behind this is sound - otherwise the police would simply arrest anyone near a crime with a bad record and rely on the total facts of that person's prior life to secure a conviction.
There are two basic "exceptions."
One is if the defendant testifies - then any evidence the prosecutor has that they are inherently untrustworthy (i.e., information that attacks the
credibly of the witness/defendant) can be introduced. Usually that's limited to things like prior felony convictions - but just the bare fact that the defendant was convicted of a prior felony. If the
defendant mentions any of these forbidden subjects that that usually "opens the door" for the prosecutor to follow up and inquire in more detail.
The second exception to the "no prior bad act" rule is informally called MIMIC - Motive, Intent, Mistake, Identity, or Common scheme or plan. The idea is that the prosecution wants to introduce the evidence of the prior bad act/crime because they need to address something
other than the "badness" of the defendant's character. (So it's not really an "exception," so much as it is a end-run - see below.) For example, a prior bad act that shows the
motive of the defendant to commit the current crime; you can think of this as being part of "the narrative" of the crime. Usually the MIMIC standards are very high. I don't know specific MA law on this point though. But in most jurisdictions there has to be 1) a huge degree of connection 2) a clear reason to introduce it (meaning that information can't be shown in any other less prejudicial way.) Even then there are limits on what you can say as a prosecutor.
Both might be a feature of this trial. If AH testifies, he may stumble in an answer that might allow the prosecution to tie the two murders together in some way. Or, if the prosecution gets their motion granted, the prosecution may be able to show that under a MIMIC theory the jury should hear about the other crime. I would have guessed that "motive" would have been the primary basis for the motion if Odin knew about the prior murders. If that can be shown, I can't imagine a judge entirely keeping the prior murder out.
While it's a powerful tool for the prosecution, it's not without risks. 1) they State might create an issue for an appeal of an otherwise "clean" conviction, 2) if the second crime isn't handled skillfully, the defense can sometimes "adopt" that crime as yet another thing the State hasn't proven, more speculation and guesswork on their part, more need to railroad someone, etc.
***
As a final thought, "evidence" as a body of law is fascinating. The basic point of the rules of evidence is to make the process fair - and that means that evidentiary rules are largely concerned with not allowing information to go in front of the fact-finder (jury) until it passes various tests/thresholds to show that it is relevant to the case itself and also meets a threshold of reliability. The obvious example is hearsay, and it's very common-sense. You
can't try to convict someone (or win a civil case) based on a witness saying, "A year ago I (Abe) heard Bill (who is not here today and who will not be testifying as a witness) say that Carl is a dirty rotten Communist who cheats on his taxes, molests little girls, and probably committed the robbery we're here today for." How is that fair unless we get to find out about Bill or directly ask Bill questions? And what if Bill is just making it up or says the information all came to him in a dream - a fact-finder shouldn't even be given the information in the first place.
However, the parties can offer evidence for specific points which "get around" some of this screening process. So in the hearsay example context, in
some particular circumstances you could have Abe testify that he ran away from Carl
because he thought Carl was a blah-blah-blah, because Bill told him Carl was a blah-blah-blah. The legal purpose of putting that in front of the jury is
only to show the effect the information had on Abe's mind, not to suggest Carl was a blah-blah-blah.
However, the average jury is going to think that they've just been told someone really really thought Carl was a blah-blah-blah, and so Carl is more likely to be a blah-blah-blah, and therefore, more likely to have committed the crime.
This is rather like the idea that the prosecutor introduces evidence of prior convictions to attack a testifying defendant's
credibility, but not their
character, or their
propensity for criminal activity. In the real world, juries pretty much always view prior convictions as an indictment of the defendant's character, and evidence that the defendant is more likely to have committed the crime.
Sometimes these type of situations are actual "exceptions" to a rule and sometimes they're "offered into evidence for a different reason." The end result is that the jury hears about the stuff that would ordinarily be kept out. The upshot is that while AH may not be accused of murder A during the murder B trial, there may be ways for the prosecution to let the jury know that AH is accused of murder A as well.
*Caveat- a lot of the stuff I post on crim law and procedure should be taken with a grain of salt. I routinely cut corners to try to flesh out the issue for those curious without posting an entire law outline overly reliant on specific legal terms. I cleaned up the post a bit with regards to an exception v. evidence offered for another reason.
Bottom line current assessment; AH is still toast. And we're talking charcoal, not lightly browned. 
