Closing arguments set for Friday in Karen Read’s retrial for the death of John O’Keefe

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After nearly eight weeks of testimony, Massachusetts prosecutors and defense attorneys for Karen Read are expected to give jurors their closing arguments on Friday as her retrial for the death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, nears its end.

Prosecutors have accused Read of hitting O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, with her SUV in January 2022 during a night out drinking with friends, alleging she struck O’Keefe while driving in reverse and left him to die outside a home in Canton, Massachusetts.

Read – whose first trial ended with a hung jury – insists on her innocence, and has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.

Read, 45, has claimed to be the target of a cover-up, alleging off-duty law enforcement inside that home were responsible for O’Keefe’s death and that they conspired to frame her. But her defense at trial has been more broadly focused on undermining the police investigation and offering jurors alternative theories for what, other than Read’s SUV, might have killed O’Keefe.

In fact, defense attorneys Thursday indicated they will not argue a so-called “third-party culprit” defense. Rather, the judge will allow them to argue the crime scene was not secure, to raise questions about the chain of custody of the evidence and bias in the investigation.

The closing arguments Friday mark the apex of not one, but two trials that have divided these suburbs south of Boston for the better part of three years, spawning a vocal contingent of court watchers who fiercely advocate for the defendant, echo her allegations of police corruption and chant, “Free Karen Read.”

Each side will get one hour and 15 minutes on Friday to sum up their cases. Prosecutors will try to synthesize the many threads they explored into one compelling story, while the defense will work to seed enough “reasonable doubt” in jurors’ minds to convince them the Commonwealth failed to meet its burden of proof.

Both will be hoping their version resonates and leads jurors to render a verdict in their side’s favor – something each side was denied at the conclusion of the first trial last July, when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, forcing Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone to declare a mistrial.

Read did not testify in either trial, though she appeared to consider the idea throughout the retrial. Prosecutors presented clips taken from interviews Read gave the media, trying to use her words against her to highlight inconsistencies in her account and bolster their theory.

The case centers on a window of time that started late on January 28, 2022, and stretched into the early morning hours of the following day.

That evening, Read and O’Keefe went out with friends to two bars in Canton, as the region braced for a historic snowstorm. The party eventually moved to a home at 34 Fairview Road, and while Read has said she dropped O’Keefe off, witnesses who testified for the prosecution said he never came inside.

It is the prosecution’s theory that O’Keefe exited the vehicle, and that Read put her SUV in reverse and pressed on the gas at about 75%. According to testimony presented at trial, prosecutors allege Read hit O’Keefe at a speed of about 24 mph, shattering her SUV’s taillight, sending the victim to the ground and causing him blunt force trauma injuries to his head that incapacitated him, leading to his death.

When Read returned to the scene the next morning with two other women, they found O’Keefe lying in the snow near a flagpole in the yard of the home. In the prosecution’s telling, when a paramedic who responded to treat O’Keefe asked what happened, Read responded, “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”

“And it was at that time, through the words of the defendant, that she admitted what she had done that night,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan said in his opening statement. “That she hit John O’Keefe.”

Read’s attorneys rejected this theory, arguing no collision occurred: Their experts testified some of O’Keefe’s injuries – specifically cuts and scratches on his arm – were caused by a dog, and that the damage to Read’s taillight was inconsistent with it striking a person.

The defense worked to undermine confidence in the investigation, highlighting sexist and offensive text messages the lead investigator, Michael Proctor, sent about the defendant. Proctor was never called to testify, but those messages ultimately led to his dishonorable discharge from the Massachusetts State Police.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Alan Jackson said there was “mounting and overwhelming evidence that there was no collision and John O’Keefe’s body was moved onto that lawn.”

Scientific evidence, he added, “will establish that Karen Read’s SUV was not damaged by hitting a pedestrian and conversely, John O’Keefe’s injuries did not come from being struck.”

“Folks, the science will not lie, and the physics cannot lie,” Jackson said. “And that science will tell you with certainty there was no collision with John O’Keefe. You’ll add that to that rising mountain of reasonable doubt.”