Aaron Hernandez, already sentenced to life in prison for one murder, returns to court on Thursday afternoon for a hearing concerning the second set of murder charges he faces.
The former Patriots tight end is expected to have new defense lawyers with him, according to the Suffolk (Mass.) County district attorney’s office. The defense team that represented him when he was convicted last year of killing Odin Lloyd, is being replaced by a “dream team” led by Jose Baez, who in 2011 helped get Casey Anthony acquitted of killing her infant daughter.
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Hernandez is charged with the drive-by killing of Safir Furtado and Daniel de Abreu in 2012 — a year before Lloyd’s murder — at an intersection after a confrontation at a Boston nightclub.
He is also charged with witness intimidation, for shooting former friend Alexander Bradley in Florida in 2013. Bradley is believed to have witnessed the double murder; he testified in the Lloyd murder case, but never pressed charges in his own shooting.
Thursday’s hearing will be in Plymouth, Mass.; the Suffolk County judge for the case, Jeffrey Locke, is currently sitting there.
Hernandez was sentenced to life without parole in the Lloyd killing in April 2015, and has been serving his time in Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Mass.