Which evidence could tilt decision?

Karen Read’s second murder trial begins with new jury

Karen Read is starting her second trial after being prosecuted for the 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, last year.

Karen Read’s voice boomed through the courtroom speakers.

“Could I have clipped him?” she asked. “Could I have done something that knocked him out, and in his drunkenness, and in the cold, he didn’t come to again?” 

It’s a question the jury in Read’s murder retrial is now considering as they decide whether she is responsible for the 2022 death of her police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe.

The 12-person panel began deliberating Friday, June 13 on the three charges against Read: second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.

Their verdict is expected to come nearly a year after Read’s first trial ended, when, after five days of discussions, jurors were unable to come to a unanimous decision. This time around, Shira Diner, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, said it’s impossible to gauge how long the jury could take.  

Through almost two months of testimony, prosecutors have painted a picture of a winter night in the suburbs of Boston gone horribly wrong.

A relationship on the rocks. A historic snowstorm barreling down. Friends and coworkers drinking together at a local bar to start the weekend. An after-party at a cop’s home. A body found under a pile of snow the next morning.

Fueled by jealousy, anger and alcohol, prosecutors allege Read backed into O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV while dropping him off at the house party, then left him to die in the snow and cold. Her defense team maintains investigators were biased against Read and overlooked evidence pointing to another cause for O’Keefe’s death: law enforcement officers inside the home at 34 Fairview Road may have beaten O’Keefe, let a violent dog attack him, and discarded his body, they suggested.

The 45-year-old woman has never taken the stand. Yet, even more than in Read’s first trial, the commonwealth’s case against her hinges on what they describe as her own “admissions.”

Prosecutors peppered multiple clips from Read’s media appearances throughout their case to reinforce witness testimony and crime scene evidence, adding a new twist to the years-long legal saga that has captivated true-crime fans, sparked conspiracy theories and splintered communities. The commonwealth is hoping the tactic will tip the trial in their favor.

But legal experts say Read’s fate more likely hangs on jurors’ predispositions, the battle between expert witnesses and the definition of reasonable doubt.

Same allegations, different case

The prosecution and defense have largely followed the same blueprint for Read’s second trial – with a few potentially critical changes. 

For one thing, they’ve each added more muscle to their bench; the commonwealth hired Hank Brennan, one of famed mobster James “Whitey” Bulger’s lawyers, and Read’s defense brought on attorney Victoria George, an alternate juror from her first trial. 

Brennan focused more on analyzing evidence than on showing the chronology of events when questioning witnesses, as did the lead prosecutor in Read’s first trial. He called only 38 people to the stand compared to the more than 60 prosecution witnesses who testified last time. 

Misty Marris, a New York-based legal expert who has been following the case, said Brennan’s approach appeared aimed at putting “pieces of the puzzle” together for jurors. 

He brought Jennifer McCabe, the sister-in-law of Brian Albert, whose home whose it was where O’Keefe was found, to the stand earlier in this trial to deliver bombshell testimony alleging Read said, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,” when they discovered his unresponsive body in the snow around 6 a.m. 

Digital analysts spent hours presenting vehicle and phone data that mapped out Read and O’Keefe’s actions in the hours before he died. Forensic scientists testified about small pieces of red plastic found near O’Keefe’s body, the nature of his injuries and Read’s fractured taillight. 

Notably missing: Michael Proctor, a former Massachusetts State Trooper and the lead investigator in O’Keefe’s case. He testified for the prosecution in Read’s first trial and was seen as a potential liability to their case, Marris said. 

Proctor sent crude text messages about Read during the investigation and was fired before the second trial began. The defense highlighted the texts as evidence that police were biased against Read from the beginning.   

Kensley Barrett, a Rhode Island defense attorney, said Brennan also presented several new pieces of evidence, including clips of interviews Read conducted and a crash reconstruction report showing Read’s SUV moving 87 feet in reverse at about the time O’Keefe’s car locked for the last time.  

The interview clips of Read appeared aimed at bolstering witness testimony about her intoxication and claims she “hit him.” But Jeffrey Abramson, a former assistant district attorney in Massachusetts who has written daily about the trial in a Substack, told USA TODAY the video clips could play against the prosecution. 

“It could humanize Karen Read in the eyes of the jury,” he suggested. “She might come across as not a monster, and that could help (the defense).” 

Read’s defense team slightly altered its strategy, too.  

In Read’s first trial, her defense directly accused Albert, a police officer, and his friend Brian Higgins, of killing O’Keefe. 

This time, the defense does not have enough evidence for that approach, Judge Beverly Cannone ruled. Instead, they used a “Bowden defense,” arguing that police failed to properly investigate Albert, Higgins and other potential suspects. 

“While the judge’s ruling sounded like a blow to the defense it isn’t really,” Marris said, adding the defense can still raise reasonable doubt. 

A case of doubt

Many of the most important elements from Read’s first trial are still at play, however. To convict Read on charges of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death, the jury must find that prosecutors proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“That’s a really high standard,” said Diner, the Boston University School of Law professor who is also a defense attorney.

Massachusetts’ instructions on reasonable doubt tell jurors they need to be convinced to a “moral certainty,” said Abramson, who also teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. The word “reasonable,” he said, doesn’t mean “beyond all doubts, because everything human is subject to some doubt.”

Read’s lawyers have built their case by sowing doubt into the reliability of evidence and the trustworthiness of the prosecution’s witnesses.  

The success of her team’s central argument that investigators bungled O’Keefe’s case may depend on whether “jurors were predisposed before this trial began to trust law enforcement, and which jurors were predisposed to have some doubts about law enforcement,” Abramson said.

But Christopher Dearborn, a law professor at Suffolk University in Boston, said the jury doesn’t have to believe the defense’s theory, or even a piece of it, to acquit Read. They merely have to think there’s enough uncertainty in the facts prosecutors presented.

Dearborn suggested one of the biggest challenges facing the jury could be deciding which experts to believe. The defense and prosecution have called witnesses who have presented competing testimony about what caused O’Keefe’s injuries and Read’s broken taillight and the reliability of evidence collected by police.

“A lot of this case is going to come down to which experts the jury found more credible,” Dearborn said. “Was it a dog fight, or was it broken glass? Was the taillight completely broken before or not? Is there a possibility the officers messed with (Read’s SUV) in the sally port?” 

The jury continues deliberating June 16.