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A Massachusetts district attorney on Wednesday appointed a special prosecutor, who has represented James “Whitey” Bulger and other prominent clients in the past, to take on the Karen Read murder case.
Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said in a statement that Hank Brennan will lead the state’s retrial in January. A former prosecutor and defense attorney, Morrissey said Brennan has worked for 25 years in state and federal courts and and has experience "with complex law enforcement matters.”
Read, 44, is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a January 2022 snowstorm. Her two-month trial ended in July when a judge declared a mistrial and a second trial is scheduled for January.
“I assume full responsibility and all obligations for prosecuting this case and will do so meticulously, ethically and zealously, without compromise," Brennan, who has the title of special assistant district attorney, said in a statement. “I have two core obligations. The first is to make certain the Karen Read receives a fair trial ... The second is to ensure that the facts surrounding John O'Keefe's death are fully fairly aired in the courtroom without outside influence.”
A lawyer for Read did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In August, Judge Beverly Cannone ruled that Read can be retried for murder and leaving the crime scene in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, dismissing arguments that jurors told lawyers after the mistrial that they had unanimously agreed she wasn’t guilty on the two charges.
Earlier this month, lawyers for Read filed an appeal on that ruling with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally, who prosecuted the first case, said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense portrayed Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s home and then dragged outside. They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.
After the mistrial, Read’s lawyers presented evidence that four jurors had said they were actually deadlocked only on a third count of manslaughter, and that inside the jury room, they had unanimously agreed that Read was innocent of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident. One juror told them that “no one thought she hit him on purpose or even thought she hit him on purpose,” her lawyers argued.
But the judge said the jurors didn’t tell the court during their deliberations that they had reached a verdict on any of the counts. “Where there was no verdict announced in open court here, retrial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” Cannone said in her ruling.
