Crime Scene Field Trip for Hernandez Jurors

FALL RIVER, Mass. (CN) - Jurors in the Aaron Hernandez murder trial hit the road Friday to visit the site of the 2013 execution that the former football star is accused of carrying out.

Other stops on the jury's road trip include the home of the victim, 27-year-old Odin Lloyd, and four Massachusetts cell towers pertinent to the case.

Hernandez's mansion, less than a mile away from the industrial park where Lloyd's bullet-riddled body was discovered, is on the jury's itinerary as well.

The 25-year-old former tight end for the New England Patriots has not been back at the home since his June 2013 arrest for Lloyd's murder earlier that month.

Family photos, religious items and football memorabilia recently added to the home's decor will be removed, Hernandez's defense team promised, in an effort to present the property as it was on the day of their client's arrest.

Prosecution cited the O.J. Simpson case, where another former NFL player being tried for murder altered his home before a jury's tour by adding religious and football paraphernalia to alter the impression of the defendant's character.

In the courtroom proceedings Thursday, defense attorney James Sultan cast doubt on the reliability of the police's inspection of the crime scene, according to the Twitter feed of the Boston Globe reporter covering the trial.

Sultan asked North Attleboro Police Captain Joseph DiRenzo if he had been trained in crime-scene evidence collection, to which DiRenz answered no.

This all came out after Sultan pointed out that officers moved evidence, including a marijuana blunt, a white towel, a Red Sox baseball cap, and five spent shell casings, before crime-scene services arrived.

DiRenzo testified that with an impending rain storm approaching, police had to build a tarp, which could only cover Lloyd's body and some tire tracks and footprints.

An entire "circus tent" would be needed to cover the entire area, DiRenzo said.

Sultan responded: "There was another canopy erected so that the officers on the scene could stay dry. ... Rather than use it to protect the elements, you were going to use it to protect the officers?"

The trial is expected to last six to 10 weeks.

After it concludes, Hernandez faces a separate, unrelated trial on two counts of first-degree murder for the July 2012 killings of two men in Boston's South End.

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