Prosecutors are already bringing Karen Read’s interviews to the jury. It has hurt defendants before

Prosecutors are using comments Karen Read has made in interviews and a documentary series in their murder case against her. Defense attorneys say her public statements could hurt her in the eyes of the jury — as with other high-profile defendants.

In a courtroom where every word is scrutinized, defense attorneys say “the right to remain silent” is golden. Karen Read did not testify in her first trial in the death of John O’Keefe, but comments she made to media outlets and in a recent documentary have already been presented this week to the jury in her retrial on murder and manslaughter charges. And prosecutors are taking advantage. That kind of public presence is something that some defense attorneys say could tip the scales of a case. Misty Marris, a defense attorney and co-managing partner of the Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani’s New York office, said a defendant’s right to remain silent is important. It’s intended to protect them from incriminating themselves on the stand, she said. “You blow that up a little bit if you make a lot of extrajudicial statements because all of a sudden there’s a lot of stuff out there that the jury would never hear and that, is in every case, a risk,” Marris told CNN. Read’s attorneys are not the first ones to face this problem. In recent years, public comments made by Robert Durst and Sam Bankman-Fried also came up in their high-profile cases.