Karen Read’s lawyers beg judge to bring back jurors over claims they were going to acquit her in sensational murder case
Karen Read’s lawyer pleaded with a Massachusetts judge to haul a dozen jurors back to court over a month after her mistrial to corroborate claims by four panelists that they planned to acquit her of murder.
“Bring the jurors in, judge,” Read’s lawyer Martin Weinberg said at a hearing Friday. “Hear from them. I beg you. It’s the right thing to do.”
The two-month trial ended in a hung jury July 1 after the panelists sent out several notes during their five days of deliberations, saying they couldn’t agree on whether to convict in the case accusing Read, 44, of fatally mowing down her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm.
Prosecutors immediately after said they planned to retry the sensational case.
But days later Read’s lawyers informed Norfolk County Judge Beverly Cannone that four jurors came forward to tell the defense team they actually agreed to acquit her on two of the three counts she faced — including the most serious charge of murder — and were only at an impasse one lesser charge.
“We are asking the court not to close the door to this new evidence,” Weinberg said during a roughly hour-long hearing, with Read sitting at the defense table. “Help us investigate this.”
Ultimately, if all the panelists were to tell the judge they planned to acquit Read on two counts, Weinberg says the case wouldn’t be worth retrying and would therefore need to be dismissed.
Prosecutor Adam Lally opposed Weinberg’s “inappropriate” request to bring back the jury.
Lally said the law protects the jury process from being probed by lawyers and judges and so bringing them in to question them would be illegal.
And the jury was clear in its notes they couldn’t reach agreement on more than just one charge, Lally added.
“This jury told the court multiple times that they reached an impasse to the ‘charges,'” Lally said. “They referred to the ‘charges’ twice.”
“There was no verdict returned by this jury,” the prosecutor said, adding that retrial could go forward without any further questioning of the since-dismissed panel members.
The judge did not issue a ruling Friday or say when she would make a decision.
Read was charged with one count of second-degree murder, one count of manslaughter while driving drunk and one count of leaving the scene of a fatal crash. She faces life in prison if she’s convicted of the top charge.
Prosecutors argued that she and O’Keefe were out bar hopping before she boozily dropped him off at a party with his cop buddies — only to back over him with her Lexus SUV and leave him in a snowbank in the Canton, Mass. yard when a snowstorm was about to hit on Jan. 29, 2022.
But her lawyers have maintained she is the patsy in a sweeping law enforcement cover-up and that O’Keefe was actually killed after a fight with his pals.
The theory has galvanized a cult following of supporters of Read who’ve regularly shown up in droves outside the court during trial and hearings.
