DEDHAM, Mass. — After weeks of courtroom proceedings, jurors in Karen Read’s murder trial began deliberating on Friday without reaching a verdict. The case has stirred strong emotions, pitting the prosecution’s argument of a deadly outcome of a troubled relationship against the defense’s assertion that a group of close-knit law enforcement officials in the Boston area conspired to kill a fellow officer.
Karen Read, aged 45, stands accused of intentionally hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, 46, with her SUV and abandoning him to perish in the snow outside a house party. The gathering involved local police officers and a federal agent concluding a night of drinking in 2022. Read faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of the crime. If found guilty of the most severe charge, she could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Jurors went home for the weekend and will resume on Monday.
The defense team representing Karen Read claimed that John O’Keefe was assaulted, attacked by a dog, and then left outside a residence in Canton, a Boston suburb, as part of a police-led plot that also involved the fabrication of evidence.
The first Read trial ended July 1 in a mistrial due to a hung jury.
Prosecution has focused on the scene of death
The state’s case was led by special prosecutor Hank Brennan, who called fewer witnesses than prosecutor Adam Lally, who ran the first trial against Read.
Describing O’Keefe as a “good man” who “helped people,” Brennan on Friday said O’Keefe needed help that night and the only person who could lend a hand – call 911 or knock on a door – was Read. Instead, she drove away in her SUV.
“She was drunk. She hit him and she left him to die,” he said, repeating the phrase twice.
Brennan again referenced Read’s statement about the possibility that she backed into O’Keefe, which the defense has pointed out came not from police reports but from a voluntary interview she did for a documentary series. In the television interview, Read said, “I didn’t think I hit him,” but acknowledged she could have “clipped him.”
He bolstered that with the testimony from first responders, several of whom heard Read say, “I hit him,” multiple times.
“She is now coming to terms with the moment. Her fear is realized,” he told jurors when she uttered those words. “She is facing the reality of what she had done. Her emotions are overwhelming.”
Brennan then played a video clip in which Read questioned whether she said, “I hit him,” so many times at the scene, words that he said validate what the first responders heard.
In the first trial, the state called Michael Proctor, a Massachusetts state trooper who was the lead investigator in the case. Proctor was later fired after a disciplinary board found he sent sexist and crude text messages about Read to his friends, family and co-workers. Prosecutors never called Proctor, but he was referenced repeatedly by attorneys during the trial.
READ MORE | Things to know about the retrial of Karen Read in the killing of her police officer boyfriend
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t be disgusted by the text messages. You should. They are not defensible,” Brennan said. “I don’t stand here and defend impropriety. I don’t. But that doesn’t change the physical evidence, the scientific evidence and the data.”
The evidence and data Brennan repeatedly referenced included a broken cocktail glass that O’Keefe was holding after he got out of the SUV and pieces of Read’s broke rear taillight from the scene.
Brennan also said the data on Read’s Lexus SUX proved she reversed the vehicle and accelerated after dropping O’Keefe at the party. She was drunk, he said, and the pair had argued on the way to the party which had added fuel to an already “toxic” and “crumbling” relationship.
Defense raises a mountain of doubt
Defense attorney Alan Jackson began his closing argument by repeating three times: “There was no collision.”
“There is no evidence that John was hit by a car. None. This case should be over right now, done, because there was no collision,” he said.
Jackson told the jury that Read is an innocent woman victimized by a police cover-up in which law enforcement officers led by ringleader Proctor sought to protect their own and obscure the real killer. He said pieces of taillight were planted. And he and zeroed in on federal agent Brian Higgins, who exchanged flirtatious text messages with Read, leading the defense to question if that led to a fatal confrontation. Higgins was present at the party.
“What happened inside that house, that basement or that garage? What evidence was there for investigators to look into? What did they ignore?” Jackson asked, noting the “obvious dog bites” on O’Keefe’s arm and the head injury from his falling backward onto a hard surface.
Jackson also dismissed the witnesses who heard Read claim she “hit” O’Keefe at the scene. “It wasn’t a confession. It was confusion,” said Jackson, noting that it was normal to ask those kinds of questions when someone is experiencing grief or in shock.
Jackson also argued the state had failed to show how Read could have hit O’Keefe with her SUV – insisting they admitted not knowing how Read hit him and showing a crash simulation of a dummy being hit but admitting they weren’t sure where O’Keefe was standing. The defense also argued Read’s taillight was damaged when she backed out of O’Keefe house and hit his car, not when she hit him.
“The truth is Karen Read is not guilty not because of technicalities but because the facts, the law, the science, the physics, the data they all say so. They demand it,” Jackson said. “The Commonwealth doesn’t have a theory about how John was hit by the car. They haven’t even shown you that it’s possible he was hit by a car.”
At the end of court Friday, a supporter handed Jackson a bouquet of pink flowers for Read, and he gave it to her when they got in a car. As she left, Read told reporters, “We’ve done everything we can.”
Whittle reported from Scarborough, Maine.
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