A Massachusetts Superior Court judge has dismissed former NFL star Aaron Hernandez's request that his recent first-degree murder conviction be thrown out or reduced.

According to ESPN, Judge E. Susan Garsh rejected a motion for a required finding of not guilty in the 2013 execution-style killing of Odin Lloyd. A jury convicted Hernandez in April of this year and such convictions carry an automatic sentence of life without parole.

ESPN adds Hernandez's request is a legally required procedural step that must be taken before an appeal can be formally filed.

In rendering her decision, Garsh concluded that prosecutors proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Hernandez, 25, is now being held at the Souza-Baranowski Facility near Boston.

Still outstanding is a separate request made by Hernandez's team of high-powered lawyers for authorities to investigate an anonymous tip that a juror in the case might have been untruthful during jury selection.

At trial, attorneys for Hernandez conceded that their client was at the scene of Lloyd's killing, but later told the jury the state had failed to prove anything beyond his presence. At the time of his death, Lloyd was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee.

The former New England Patriots star is now awaiting a second trial stemming from a 2012, drive-by, double murder in downtown Boston. Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu both died in a hail of bullets in a shooting police allege was sparked by one of them accidentally spilling a drink on Hernandez in a nightclub and failing to apologize.

According to the Hartford Courant, in the Lloyd case, Hernandez's attorneys have challenged the extreme cruelty or atrocity element of the crime he was found guilty of. While acknowledging that all murders are cruel, they say the six gunshot wounds that killed Lloyd are not so extreme as to merit first-degree murder.