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Aaron Hernandez trial: Fiancée stands by her man as jury deliberates

FALL RIVER, Mass. – Each morning red bags are placed over a couple of parking meters on South Main Street, directly in front of the Fall River Justice Center.

The stretch of spots is reserved for the families of the victim and the defendant in the case of the Commonwealth v. Aaron Hernandez.

Shayanna Jenkins waits in the courtroom during the jury deliberation. (REUTERS)
Shayanna Jenkins waits in the courtroom during the jury deliberation. (REUTERS)

Mostly it's proven to be a way to ease the arrival and departure for the women of this trial, Shayanna Jenkins, Hernandez's fiancée, and Ursula Ward, the mother of Odin Lloyd.

The body of Lloyd, a 27-year-old landscaper from Boston, was found riddled with bullets on June 17, 2013, in a North Attleboro field. Prosecutors allege Hernandez, a former New England Patriots star, was the triggerman. A Bristol County jury completed its sixth day of deliberations Tuesday, about 35 hours total, without a verdict. They'll return to work Wednesday.

Jenkins will likely return also, parallel parking her Audi A4 2.0T into one of those cordoned-off spaces. White stickers are pressed to the car's rear window reading: "Warwick Audi. Courtesy Vehicle."

She arrives, always, impeccably dressed, hair and makeup just right, carrying a brown, checkered Louis Vuitton bag. Sometimes she brings along a girlfriend. Sometimes she meets with Hernandez's aunt and uncle.

This week she's come alone, though, as a jury of 12 grinds on. She's standing by her man, with no one standing by her.

This is the cauldron of emotions and memories and fears and futility that Jenkins, 25, steps into each morning.

Around the courthouse, Shayanna is seen not as a sympathetic family member, but as someone who may have covered up the crime. The day after the murder, with police focused on Hernandez, she jettisoned a box out of the spacious dream home she and Hernandez shared with their now 2-year-old daughter. She said she disposed of the box in a mystery dumpster, the whereabouts she can no longer recall.

Prosecutors say it contained the murder weapon.

She was previously charged with 29 counts of lying to a grand jury but in an effort to compel her testimony in this trial, she was granted full immunity for that and anything she said here. She became a prosecution witness against the father of her child.

Her star turn on the stand produced much discussion for her implausible answers and willingness to tolerate Hernandez's serial philandering. It cemented her willingness to support Hernandez even though he is accused of murdering her own sister's boyfriend.

"Estranged," is how Shayanna described her relationship these days with Shaneah Jenkins, two years her junior.

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Despite all of that, Shayanna moves with … if not ease then at least outward comfort.

She strides confidently into the building and sits in the front row of the gallery of Courtroom 7, on the building's fifth floor. She calmly pulls out a tablet and dives into a book. On occasion she'll leaf through a fashion magazine or play a game. She'll stand and smile at Hernandez, who mouths, "I love you," when he enters and leaves, but otherwise the days are filled with tedium.

She is alone, surrounded by rows of gossipy media and bored court officers, by fascinated locals and attorneys on all sides with nothing to do but grow more nervous by the hour. It's a somewhat motley crew, sprawled out, edgy and animated, emboldened by the absence of a judge and incapable of sitting silent or still. Discussions often venture past polite boundaries. Her fiancé is the subject of 99 percent of the courtroom prattle.

Jenkins reacts to nothing. She actually occasionally engages in small talk. When the room ran out of media seating Tuesday afternoon, she happily offered space on her bench for late-arriving reporters.

She sits like someone trained in the art of etiquette, in a disciplined, straight-backed, yet delicate manner. She bears little resemblance to this case's plethora of two-bit gangsters and mouthy, rough-around-the-edges characters who populated this trial, many from Bristol, Conn., the hometown where she and Hernandez met and began dating back in middle school.

She is exceedingly polite and pleasant. She looks at almost everyone directly and smiles sweetly. She opens doors and waits for others to walk in front of her.

She acts nothing like a woman with so much hanging in the balance.

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Ursula Ward is always a passenger when she comes to court, driven by family or friends from her home in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, 50 miles north of here. Shaneah Jenkins, a 23-year-old law student, is often with her. They pull in and park bumper to bumper with Shayanna.

Ward has missed not a single day of the proceedings, a regular often decked out in purple – her son's favorite color. She doesn't wear the name brands of Shayanna, yet makes the most of what she has.

Shaneah Jenkins weeps during testimony as Ursula Ward, right, looks on. (AP)
Shaneah Jenkins weeps during testimony as Ursula Ward, right, looks on. (AP)

About 50 years old, she looks exhausted and devastated, with reddened eyes. She somehow manages to pull it together each day. She has struggled to maintain composure during the trial and was scolded by Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh for crying when images of Odin's abandoned bullet-riddled body were shown to jurors.

She is never by herself, huddling with her family and friends, escorted everywhere by victim's advocates supplied by the District Attorney's Office. During deliberations, they spend most of their time in the "Victim/Witness Room" on the first floor, where a television, DVD player and lunch can offer a modicum of comfort.

Court officers describe her as a woman of great dignity and deep faith, one that doesn't want to be the center of attention, but will not allow a day to go by without making sure Hernandez, in particular, knows she is there, waiting and watching on behalf of her son.

Her presence and graciousness have extended beyond her own trial. In the victim room over the past week she befriended the family of a now 15-year-old girl who'd accused a coach at a local high school of rape.

That trial reached a verdict Tuesday morning in Courtroom 6, adjacent to where the Hernandez case has played out since early January. Ward accompanied the accuser and her family into the emotionally charged room.

The jury found the defendant not guilty on all counts, leading to wailing cries and intense anger from the accuser's side, played against celebration on the other. The entire room was overwrought, tense and on the verge of violent explosion as the decision was read.

Ursula Ward simply stood, though, offering matriarchal hugs for the accuser and the family. They clutched her back and wept into her shoulder.

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Back in Courtroom 7, at both the beginning and end of the day, when Judge Garsh welcomes and then dismisses the jury, Shayanna and Ursula sit on opposite sides of the courtroom. They never speak. They avoid even looking at each other. Shayanna allows them to clear out before heading to the elevator.

As awkward as sitting all day in a warm, crowded courtroom must be for Shayanna, there is hardly anywhere she can go here without drawing attention.

The other day, during an afternoon break in the trial, she went to the Dunkin Donuts across from the downtown courthouse with two other Hernandez family members, sitting causally at a counter by the window.

Ursula was also there and, according to witnesses present, tearing up at having to be so close, out in public, to Shayanna.

She maintained her dignity, sparing everyone a donut shop dust-up. She'll let the courts and her God handle this.

In the interim, everyone circles, the minutes dragging on, each seemingly longer than the last.

The only certainty for Wednesday is the morning parking spots will again be reserved here in the murder trial of Aaron Hernandez and the impossible crucible of Ursula Ward and Shayanna Jenkins.