Aaron Hernandez Attorney Jose Baez Predicts He Will Be Free, Odin Lloyd Appeal Planned

Aaron Hernandez is not a killer and could soon be a free man says the attorney who just got him acquitted on first-degree, double murder charges.

Jose Baez insists he believes Hernandez’s conviction as the triggerman in the 2013 Odin Lloyd killing and the life in prison without the possibility of parole sentence that followed can be overturned.

Fresh off earning the former NFL star an acquittal in the drive-by shooting deaths of Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, the famed Casey Anthony attorney added he hopes Hernandez will now turn to him to relitigate that case.

“Nothing would make me happier than to prove everybody wrong,” he told TMZ.

While all Hernandez’s legal troubles have all but exhausted his once sizeable bank account, Baez insists there is a way Hernandez can still afford his pricey services.

Baez contends Hernandez has “friends and supporters” who “hopefully… will come forward” to assist him financially.

“There’s no finality in the other case yet,” Baez added after securing his most recent victory. “He still has many appeals, which we’re going to start taking a look at. In that case, I always felt that that was a winnable case. Unfortunately, Aaron didn’t call me then. He went with his agent’s recommendation, and here we are today. But I always thought the first case was a winnable case.”

Baez added he thinks Hernandez has grounds for appeal on several fronts and is convinced “there’s a strong likelihood” that he’ll be granted a new trial.

“Aaron’s not a killer,” he said. “What’s interesting is that he hung around a lot of bad people, and if he’s guilty of anything it’s guilty of not forgetting where he came from, and hanging around the wrong group of people.”

Hernandez was convicted of gunning down Lloyd near his North Attleboro estate after becoming concerned that the former semi-pro football player might be thinking of fingering him in other violent crimes he was suspected of having been involved in.

In the most recent case, prosecutors argued Hernandez gunned down both Furtado and de Abreu as they sat at a red light outside a downtown Boston nightclub after one of them accidentally spilled a drink oh him and failed to apologize.

Hernandez quietly wept as the verdict was announced, putting an end to a long and laboring ordeal that included six days of deliberations.

In time, the former New England Patriots tight end glanced back at fiancée Shayanna Jenkins and nodded somberly as relatives of the victims sobbed loudly.

Throughout the trial, attorneys for Hernandez fingered former pal Alexander Bradley as the shooter. An admitted drug dealer who was with Hernandez on the night of the shootings, Bradley took the stand against Hernandez in the case.

Bradley is now serving a five-year sentence for a separate shooting in Hartford, and from his opening words from the stand, the defense hammered at his credibility, making prominent mention of the immunity deal he had secured with prosecutors in order to testify.

Not long after the Boston shooting, authorities charged Hernandez with shooting Bradley in the face, all in a callous attempt to intimidate him into not taking the stand against him.

Bradley lost his right eye in the shooting, but Hernandez was ultimately acquitted of witness intimidation.

In the double-murder trial, jurors did convict Hernandez of unlawful possession of a gun, with the judge sentencing him to an additional four to five years in prison, separate from his existing life sentence.

Just before being charged in the Lloyd killing, Hernandez had signed a $40 million extension with the New England Patriots that the team later moved to void.

[Featured Image by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images]