About a month after his suicide a judge vacated Aaron Hernandez’s murder conviction for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd because the former New England Patriots star from Bristol died while his appeal was pending.
— Dan Wetzel (@DanWetzel) May 9, 2017
The Massachusetts legal principle that reversed Hernandez’s conviction posthumously is known as “abatement ab initio”.
Via The Boston Globe
In the eyes of the state of Massachusetts, the death of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez could make him an innocent man, thanks to an archaic legal principle called “abatement ab initio,” said Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel to the Massachusetts Bar Association.
Though Hernandez was convicted in 2015 of murdering Odin L. Lloyd of Boston, Hernandez’s appeal was not complete. Abatement ab initio means “from the beginning,” Healy said, and it means that upon a person’s death, if they have not exhausted their legal appeals, their case reverts to its status at the beginning — it’s as if the trial and conviction never happened.
Now that all of Hernandez’s legal issues have been cleared it will be interesting to see if the Patriots and the NFL will be forced to pay up the millions of dollars they were withholding from him after he was convicted for murder.
— Chris Villani (@ChrisVillani44) May 9, 2017
