Former Gators TE Aaron Hernandez's 2015 murder conviction has been reinstated by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The conviction was dismissed due to a common-law doctrine called abatement ab initio, which allows dismissal of convictions if the defendant dies during the appeals process.
Per USA Today:
However, the state's highest court ruled Wednesday that the doctrine is "outdated and no longer consonant with the circumstances of contemporary life, if, in fact, it ever was."
"The proper course is to dismiss the appeal as moot and note in the trial court record that the conviction removed the defendant's presumption of innocence, but that the conviction was appealed and neither affirmed nor reversed because the defendant died," associate justice Elspeth Cypher wrote in the opinion.
Hernandez played for the Gators from 2007-2010.