Aaron Hernandez’s Lawyer Claims Suicide Was Due to CTE, Not Sexual Orientation

Aaron Hernandez’s defense attorney has reportedly maintained that the former NFL player killed himself because he was suffering from CTE, and not because of his sexuality.

Jose Baez told TMZ that Netflix’s documentary, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez wrongly implies that Hernandez might have taken his life because of his alleged secret. Instead, Baez said Hernandez’s suicide was due to advanced CTE, a brain disease he had struggled with for years. Baez has argued that Hernandez’s sexual orientation played no part in his death.

Baez was set on having Boston University look at his client’s brain, since they specifically study CTE. But he later accused the Worcester Medical Examiner of illegally keeping the brain. Baez also minimized rumors that Hernandez had an affair with an inmate.

The Netflix doc explores Hernandez allegedly being gay and afflicted by it. His school’s quarterback, Dennis SanSoucie even asserted they hooked up when they were younger. The doc angered Baez, who told TMZ that he agreed to speak on the doc if producers promised not to interview particular people about Hernandez’s sexuality. Baez recently took to Instagram to comment on the doc, shortly after the series premiered, though he didn’t mention SanSoucie by name. Still, Baez said that the producers “lied directly to my face” and referred to the project as a “money-making scheme.”

“I don’t give a damn about what some lame-ass documentary has to say about Aaron,” he wrote on Instagram. “I knew him, they did not and while he was far from perfect, they are not even close to the truth.”