DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — A defense attorney for Karen Read pleaded with the court Friday to consider new evidence that multiple jurors acquitted her on two counts and not force her to face a new trial in connection with her husband’s death. Friend of a Boston police officer.
Read is accused of driving her SUV into John O’Keefe in January 2022 and leaving him to die in a snowstorm. two-month trial version ended last month when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
“We have evidence here that the jury acquitted Ms. Read,” defense attorney Marty Weinberg said in court. “What could be more central to the core values of our criminal justice system than to join with a respected and experienced Supreme Court justice in making a judicial determination as to whether or not that is the case and, if it is, to stop her from being prosecuted again?”
A new trial is scheduled to begin on January 27.
In several motions filed since the mistrial, the defense claims that four jurors said the jury unanimously returned acquittals on the counts of premeditated murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident, while disagreeing on the remaining count of manslaughter. To retry them on those two counts would be unconstitutional, the jurors said.
They also reported that a juror told them, “no one believed that she hit him intentionally, or even believed that she hit him intentionally.”
Weinberg asked Judge Beverly Cannone to consider several options to prove that the jury acquitted Read on both counts.
Weinberg said she could ask the jury whether to reach a verdict on the three counts or to let the four jurors question anonymously. If she did not want to accept the defense’s statements, she could authorize the defense to ask the jury “if they would make an affidavit that could be two sentences – we have unanimously decided to acquit Ms. Read on counts 1 and 3.”
“Your Honor has a lot of discretion when it comes to determining what the truth is here,” Weinberg said.
Prosecutors called the defense’s motion to dismiss charges of first-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident an “unproven but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and a legally inappropriate reliance on the content of the jury’s deliberations.”
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally asked Cannone to deny the defense’s motion.
Lally argued that at no point did the jury indicate that it had already reached a verdict on the charges, that it had been given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to a declaration that the trial would not be successful.
“No verdict was returned that said anything about this case,” Lally said. “The two counts the defendant is now complaining about were a simple choice. There was a box for guilty and a box for not guilty. Neither was checked. Neither was returned to the court at any time. There is no verdict in this case.”
Cannone said she would consult on the matter.
Read, a former associate professor at Bentley College, had been drinking with O’Keefe, a 16-year-old member of the Boston Police Department. O’Keefe was found outside another police officer’s home in Canton, Massachusetts. An autopsy found that O’Keefe had died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense argued that O’Keefe was killed in the house after Read dropped him off, and those involved decided to pin the blame on her because she was a “convenient outsider.”
