Judge declines to dismiss murder case against Karen Read after July mistrial
DEDHAM, Mass. — A judge has ruled that Karen Read can be retried for the murder of her Boston police officer boyfriend, rejecting an argument that jurors unanimously found her not guilty of two of three charges after a mistrial.
Read is accused of hitting John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead during a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial period ended in July when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
Judge Beverly Canone’s decision, announced Friday, means the case can proceed with a new trial set to begin Jan. 27.
The defense presented evidence that four jurors had testified after the trial that the jury had unanimously acquitted the defendant of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. They could not agree on the remaining charge of manslaughter.
Retrying her on those two charges would be unconstitutional, the attorneys argued. They also reported that a juror told them that “no one thought she hit him on purpose or even thought she hit him on purpose.”
But the judge said the jurors did not tell the court during their deliberations that they had reached a verdict on any of the charges. “Where no verdict has been reached in open court here, a new trial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy.”
Earlier this month, Read’s attorney Marty Weinberg asked Cannone to consider a number of options to prove the jury acquitted Read of the two charges.
She could poll the jury, Weinberg said, to see if they reached a verdict on the three counts or question the four jurors anonymously. If she didn’t want to accept the defense statements, he added, she could authorize defense attorneys to ask the jurors “whether or not they would write a sworn statement that could consist of two sentences — we unanimously reached a final decision to acquit Ms. Read on Counts 1 and 3.”
Prosecutors described the defense’s request to drop the charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident as an “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and legally flawed reliance on the contents of the jury’s deliberations.”
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally urged Cannone to deny the defense’s motion during the hearing earlier this month.
Lally argued that the jury never indicated that it had reached a verdict on any of the charges, that they were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the declaration of a mistrial.