The fiancé of Aaron Hernandez will be in Fall River Superior Court on Tuesday as Shayanna Jenkins will appear before a judge to be arraigned on a perjury charge in the murder case involving her boyfriend, the former Patriots tight end and the arraignment comes after she was indicted in late September.
According to the Associated Press, Jenkins will be in court to face the charge against her for perjury, as the state alleges that she lied before a grand jury involved in the case against Hernandez. The report from the AP says that she testified with false statements during both or one of her appearances on August 13 and 15 and that details about what she said could come out on Tuesday. Hernandez himself was in court last week for a pretrial hearing in his case and now this is the first time that Jenkins will be appearing in court since being hit with her charges.
The Sun Chronicle in Massachusetts reports that Jenkins is being handled by attorney Janice Bassil, who is a partner at Carney and Bassil, whose other partner, J.W. Carney, has defended some tough clients, including Whitey Bulger in his trial. The case for Jenkins is a serious one and if found guilty she could be facing a lengthy sentence since it is a murder trial and investigation. The indictment came down on Jenkins in late September and now she will be in court to answer to the charges as she is arraigned on one count of perjury in the case.
The main crux of her indictment may come from the fact that police believe that she was the one to dispose of the murder weapon ion the case on request of Hernandez. Her fiancé was originally arrested in June for the murder of Odin Lloyd and the gun in the case has yet to be found by investigators. Police spoke with Jenkins and also searched a storage unit in her name for the gun, as they believe they saw he leaving the home the day after the murder with a black bag that had a rigid object in it, possibly being the murder weapon.
The grand jury may have believed that she was lying about disposing of the gun and that could be what she is charged for. The report says that police believe she took a lock box or a gun safe out of the house following the murder and they searched a storage unit in Hernandez's home town in Bristol about the possibility of the gun being there. Court documents say that she is seen leaving the home in her sisters car and returning without the object and it also says that Hernandez sent her a "cryptic" text an hour before she did so.
The police believe she may have been the one to dispose of the weapon and that it could be in the woods, as police found a weapon located off of Landry Avenue, although that was not the gun in question. Jenkins will be in court on Tuesday and after that there will be more to report.
