A retrial begins on Tuesday for Karen Read, the woman accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in 2022.
Read maintains her innocence, claiming she was framed by law enforcement, and will again face charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and motor vehicle homicide.
Read's legal team argues that O’Keefe was killed by someone else at a house party in Canton, suggesting another law enforcement official present as a possible suspect.
They allege O’Keefe was struck and left to die in the snow, not by Read's SUV as prosecutors contend, but by another individual.
The first trial ended in a mistrial last year after the jury reached an impasse. Following the trial, several jurors claimed the group had unanimously agreed on Read's innocence on the most serious charges, including second-degree murder.
However, despite these claims and allegations of governmental misconduct, the judge denied the defense's motions to dismiss the charges or the case entirely. Read now faces the same charges in this second trial.
What is the case against Read?
Read, who worked as a financial analyst and Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.
After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.
Like the first trial, prosecutors will try to persuade jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple's relationship had begun to sour before O'Keefe's death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother's wife testified that Read told her the couple fought in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.
The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.
Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found that he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He also is on the prosecution's witness list.
A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.
They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.
Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read's lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O'Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can't mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend, Brian Higgins. Lawyers can not implicate Albert's nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.
Soon after the mistrial, Read's lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.
They argued that Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.
The defense said that because jurors had agreed that Read wasn't guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state's highest court and a federal court judge. Defense attorneys have since appealed the federal ruling.
Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to "hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.
The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read's passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.
The biggest difference will the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented a number of prominent clients, including James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.
