Aaron Hernandez's Former Lawyer Claims His Client's 'Final Days Were Happy Days'

A new docuseries about former NFL star Aaron Hernandez hopes to shed light not only on the alleged double life leading up to his prison sentence, but the "happy" final days leading up to his suicide in 2017.

In the new two-part Oxygen docuseries Aaron Hernandez Uncovered, everyone from his former lawyer, old teammates and his ex-fiancee Shayanna Jenkins, share their own perspectives on the athlete. Hernandez was serving a life sentence in connection with the murder of Odin Lloyd in 2013, before hanging himself in his cell with a bedsheet. Since then, there has been plenty of information about his life and death to become public but not all of it has been entirely accurate. “After his death, I can tell you it really disturbed me how many people were throwing out stories and saying certain things that were not only factually inaccurate but just outright abusive,” said former Hernandez defense attorney Jose Baez to Fox News.

Baez still maintains that Hernandez, though present at the time of Odin's murder, was not responsible. "I thought and I felt, and I still do to this day, that the real story has to get out there... no jury has ever convicted Aaron of pulling the trigger that actually killed Odin Lloyd. And people don’t ever talk about that." Baez, who is writing his own tell-all book set for release in the summer, was shocked and disturbed to learn about his client's suicide and says in the days leading up to it, Hernandez actually seemed to be in good spirits. “Aaron’s final days were happy days,” he said. “He was excited by the fact that he got acquitted. He was looking forward to the future. The best way I could describe it is through his own words. He said, ‘I feel like a kid again.’ He was so excited and happy.”

Ultimately, Baez blames chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) for Hernandez' death, with the brain-damaging condition being the most severe case ever found in someone his age. According to researchers at Boston University, that level of damage can have significant effects on decision-making, judgment, and cognition."If the brain is destroyed, and it was, then that’s what makes us go. Our thoughts, our decisions… our whole existence flows from that,” Baez said.

According to Baez, the docuseries won't be a "lovefest," but he hopes it will show a side of him the public would not have been privy to. "Everybody who knew Aaron absolutely loved him, and the biggest problem was not that many people knew him," he explained. "To this very day, everyone Aaron touched is incredibly distraught over it all.”