Aaron Hernandez's best defense may be his own erratic behavior

FALL RIVER, Mass. – The prosecution put a college kid on the stand here Tuesday. Kwami Nicholas is a history and political science major at Bridgewater State, 30 miles south of Boston. He pays some bills with a part-time job at a movie theater.

Nicholas seems like a nice guy, an Antiguan immigrant trying to tackle life with a bright, easy smile. He managed to become a star witness in the Commonwealth's murder case against former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez for two reasons:

1. Back in June of 2013, just after turning 21, Nicholas was inside a Boston nightclub at the same time as Hernandez and Odin Lloyd, the latter of whom he was acquainted with through mutual friends.

2. The prosecution appears desperate to establish some kind of motive for why Hernandez would, about 48 hours later, kill Lloyd, as it alleges.

This is the part of the case with which the Commonwealth has struggled. A mountain of evidence has established the who, the what, the where, the when and the how. But not so much the why, probably because trying to explain why Aaron Hernandez does anything is virtually impossible.

If there is one golden ticket out of a conviction for Hernandez, though, it's the hope that the jury demands a motive.

So the prosecution flails about, trying to show a rift between Hernandez and Lloyd. That includes putting Nicholas on the stand all because he claimed he briefly saw Hernandez glaring at Lloyd inside a nightclub in the early morning hours of June 15, 2013.

Hernandez, Nicholas claimed, "seemed upset" and was "angry about something."

What that "something" was, Nicholas had no idea. He claims Hernandez stormed out of the club, although video surveillance doesn't really suggest that.

____________________

There were myriad problems here.

First off, details were scarce. Second, the idea of a serious rift between Hernandez and Lloyd, the kind that would normally leave one man dead, doesn't compute based on the evidence brought forth across 28 days of this trial.

The jury has already heard that not long after leaving the club on June 15, Hernandez and Lloyd were in Hernandez's car, picking up two women (Hernandez's babysitter and a friend).

The babysitter, Jennifer Fortier, described a car ride where the two men laughed and sang along together to rap songs as they drove to an apartment Hernandez rented in the Boston suburbs. Once there, Lloyd and Hernandez smoked pot, drank wine and partied some more. The rest of the weekend Lloyd kept driving a nice black Suburban Hernandez was renting.

If Hernandez was "angry about something," he seemed to have gotten over it.

Then there was Nicholas himself, a young man who was eviscerated on cross-examination by high-profile defense attorney Michael Fee. Nicholas seemed well-meaning enough but he kept getting caught up in changing stories and inconsistencies to what he originally told police in a 2013 videotaped interview. It was something out of "My Cousin Vinny."

Fee kept replaying snippets of the video, showing how what Nicholas said then was often the direct opposite of what he said in court Tuesday. It torched his credibility. Nicholas compounded the issue by trying to claim even after watching the video he still couldn't remember what he said the first time. It was brutal and played to the defense theme that most witnesses were coached-up prosecution stooges.

"Do you have a poor memory, sir?" Fee asked in a mocking tone.

"No, I don't have a poor memory," Nicholas said, although it kind of seems like he did.

____________________

So the prosecution's relentless attempt to find a motive here led it to put an unprepared and unreliable witness on the stand for Hernandez's skilled defense team to carve up and look good to the jury over something that was probably a moot point anyway.

This is the conundrum, though.

If Hernandez did kill Lloyd there may not be a reasonable motive because Hernandez isn't a reasonable person.

If allowed to see the totality of Hernandez's behavior, it all makes sense.

There's his upcoming double-homicide trial in Boston that, prosecutors allege, stemmed from someone spilling a drink on the NFL star in 2012 and then failing to apologize. That, prosecutors say, led to an enraged Hernandez pulling up alongside the victims at a stoplight and blasting the car, leaving two dead and one wounded.

Then there's an alleged 2013 incident in South Florida where Hernandez, according to civil court documents, is accused of shooting a friend between the eyes and leaving him in a field on the side of the road after they argued about how to split a strip club bill.

And don't forget the 2007 incident at the University of Florida when Hernandez was a 17-year-old freshman. He ordered and consumed two alcoholic drinks but then refused to pay, according to a Gainesville police report. When a bouncer tried to remedy the situation – Hernandez was both drinking underage and stealing the cocktails – the tight end sucker punched him, busting his eardrum. It might have been worse but Tim Tebow broke up the fight.

None of this is admissible in Hernandez's current case because Bristol County Superior Court Judge Susan Garsh ruled against allowing "prior bad acts" as evidence.

The district attorney appealed the ruling on the Florida shooting all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Court but lost.

____________________

If the jury knew the full picture of Hernandez's inexplicable volatility and prevalence for alleged senseless violence then the prosecution wouldn't need to convey a motive for why he would've killed Odin Lloyd. It's the kind of thing he apparently does.

However, without the prior bad acts, the jury doesn't know what it doesn't know. It might have doubts and want an answer.

So the Commonwealth keeps trying to figure out an angle to make this make sense. But this doesn't easily make normal sense.

Consider that, according to prosecution evidence thus far, Hernandez, rather than trying to lure Lloyd somewhere neutral – perhaps with a third party – instead drove a car he rented in his own name to Lloyd's home in suburban Boston. He personally picked him up, with Lloyd's younger sister watching from the front porch.

Then, rather than kill Lloyd in Boston, where murders are more common and any number of suspects could be considered, Hernandez drove some 40 miles almost directly to a field right near his own home in leafy North Attleboro. The body wasn't even buried or hidden; it was just left in the open to be easily discovered by a high school kid on a jog the next afternoon, before even a light rain could wash away some evidence.

There were tire marks in the dirt and footprints of relatively rare size 13 retro Air Jordans, too. Of the six spent shell casings from the alleged murder weapon, five wound up at the murder scene and one inside Hernandez's rental car. He didn't even clean it out before returning it to Enterprise.

Inside his own home, Hernandez's surveillance system recorded him walking around with what the prosecution contends was the murder weapon minutes after the timeline of Lloyd's death. And while everyone agrees Hernandez erased some security tapes, for some reason he didn't wipe them all out.

This wasn't a well-planned murder. It was the act of either an innocent man with the worst possible luck … or a complete idiot.

Then again, it may be perfectly logical since based on testimony Hernandez spent nearly that entire weekend drunk, high or both.

Rather than ignore motive, though, and just stick with all the evidence that puts Hernandez and Lloyd together at the murder scene at around 3:30 a.m., the prosecution keeps trying to tie it all together in a nice, neat narrative bow.

That may prove impossible, though, done in by Hernandez's own erratic and almost impossible-to-believe behavior.

In a strange way, it may be Aaron Hernandez's best shot left at beating the rap.