Karen Read back in court after murder case of Boston police officer boyfriend ended in mistrial
BOSTON — Karen Read will appear in court for the first time Monday since her murder trial involving her Boston police officer boyfriend. ended in a mistrial.
Read is accused of hitting John O’Keefe with her SUV in January 2022 and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm. Her two-month trial period ended when jurors declared there was a hopeless deadlock and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
One of the topics likely to be discussed is the jury’s deliberations during the trial.
In separate motions, the defense claims that four jurors said the jury unanimously acquitted her on those two charges. The jurors reported that they were deadlocked only on the charge of manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and that retrying her on the murder charge would be unconstitutional because of double jeopardy, they said.
The defense also argues that Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly announced the mistrial without questioning the jurors about their positions on each of the three charges against Read and without giving attorneys for both sides an opportunity to comment.
Prosecutors called the defense’s request to drop charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident an “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and legally flawed reliance on the contents of the jury’s deliberations.”
While opposing a new trial, the defense also wants the judge to conduct a “post-verdict inquiry” and question all 12 jurors, if necessary, to determine the record they say should have been compiled before the mistrial was declared, showing that the jurors “unanimously acquitted the defendant of two of the three counts against her.”
After the mistrial, Cannone ordered that the names of the jurors not be released for 10 days. She extended that order indefinitely on Thursday after one of the jurors filed a motion saying she feared for her own safety and that of her family if the names were made public. The order does not prevent a juror from coming forward and identifying themselves, but so far no one has done so.
Prosecutors argued that the defense had been given a chance to respond and, after a note from the jury stating that the case was deadlocked, they told the court that there had been sufficient time and moved to declare the jury deadlocked. Prosecutors wanted deliberations to continue, which they did before a mistrial was declared the next day.
“Contrary to the presentation in defendant’s motion and supporting affidavits, defendant argued for and consented to a mistrial, given that she had ample opportunity to object and instead remained silent, thereby removing any bar of double jeopardy to a new trial,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, had been drinking with O’Keefe, a 16-year-old Boston police officer who was found outside the home of another Boston police officer in Canton. An autopsy found that O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense argued that O’Keefe was killed in the house after Read dropped him off and that those involved had chosen to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.”