BOSTON—The ongoing legal battle in the Karen Read case has now reached the state’s highest court, where her legal team is seeking to have several charges related to the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend dismissed.
Read is accused of fatally striking John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to perish in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her attorneys claim she is being set up and that other law enforcement officials are responsible for O’Keefe’s death. A mistrial was declared in June when the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision. A new trial on the same charges is scheduled for January, with both sides requesting a delay until April 1.
The defense is anticipated to reiterate their arguments presented in briefs to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that retrying Read on charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene would violate the constitutional protection against double jeopardy.
According to the defense, five jurors came forward after the mistrial to reveal that they were deadlocked only on a manslaughter charge and had reached a consensus that she was not guilty of the other charges, which they had not communicated to the judge.
The defense also contends that the jurors’ affidavits “clearly and unequivocally show that Ms. Read is not guilty” and support their request for a hearing to determine if the jurors acquitted her on the two charges.
Read’s defense team referenced a ruling in the case of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, where a federal appeals court instructed the trial judge to investigate claims of juror bias and reassess the validity of his death sentence.
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“According to the defense brief, “Under the Commonwealth’s logic, no defendant claiming that the jury acquitted her but failed to announce that verdict would be entitled to further inquiry, no matter how clear and well-supported her claim.”
The defense further argued that the judge declared the mistrial abruptly in court without confirming each juror’s stance on each count.
“There is no indication that the court gave any consideration to alternatives, most notably inquiry regarding partial verdicts,” as per the defense brief. “And counsel was not given a full opportunity to be heard. The court never asked for counsel’s views, or even mentioned the word mistrial.”
In August, a judge ruled that Read could stand trial again on those charges. “Where there was no verdict announced in open court here, retrial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” stated Judge Beverly Cannone in her ruling.
Prosecutors argued in their brief to the court that there was no legal basis for dismissing the charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of the accident.
They highlighted in the brief that the jury had indicated three times that they were deadlocked before the mistrial was declared. Prosecutors claimed that the “defendant was given a meaningful opportunity to be heard on any alleged alternative.”
“The defendant was not acquitted of any charge because the jury did not return, announce, and affirm any open and public verdicts of acquittal,” they wrote. “That requirement is not a mere formality, ministerial act, or empty technicality. It is a fundamental safeguard that ensures no juror’s position is mistaken, misrepresented, or coerced by other jurors.”
Prosecutors alleged that Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year veteran of the Boston police force, had been heavily drinking before she dropped him off at a party at the residence of Brian Albert, another Boston officer. They claimed she struck him with her SUV before driving away. A post-mortem examination revealed that O’Keefe died from hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense painted Read as the victim, contending that O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s residence and then moved outside. They argued that investigators targeted Read because she was an “easy outsider” who diverted attention from considering law enforcement officers as possible suspects.
By Michael Casey
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