Karen Read back in court after murder case of Boston police officer boyfriend ended in mistrial
CTV
Karen Read returns to court Monday for the first time since her murder case involving her Boston police officer boyfriend ended in a mistrial.
Karen Read returns to court Monday for the first time since her murder case involving her Boston police officer boyfriend ended in a mistrial.
Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
Jury deliberations during the trial are among the issues likely to be addressed.
In several motions, the defence contends four jurors have said the jury unanimously reached a not-guilty verdict on those two charges. The jurors reported being deadlocked only on the charge of manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and trying her again for murder would be unconstitutional double jeopardy, they said.
The defence also argues Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly announced the mistrial without questioning the jurors about where they stood on each of the three charges Read faced and without giving lawyers for either side a chance to comment.
Prosecutors described the defence request to drop charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident an “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim" based on “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.”
As they push against a retrial, the defence also wants the judge to hold a “post-verdict inquiry” and question all 12 jurors if necessary to establish the record they say should have been created before the mistrial was declared, showing jurors “unanimously acquitted the defendant of two of the three charges against her.”
