Highest court in Massachusetts to hear arguments in Karen Read’s bid to dismiss murder charges

BOSTON — The latest chapter in the Karen Read saga moves to the state’s highest court, where her attorneys hope Wednesday to convince judges to drop several charges in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend .

Read is accused of ramming John O’Keefe with her SUV and abandoning him during a snowstorm in January 2022. Read’s attorneys claim she was framed and that other law enforcement officers are responsible for O’Keefe’s death. A judge declared a mistrial in June after finding that jurors could not reach an agreement. A new trial on the same charges will begin in January, although both sides on Monday asked for a postponement until April. 1.

The defense is expected to repeat the arguments it made in its brief to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, namely that retrying Read on charges of first-degree murder and leaving the scene would be unconstitutional double jeopardy.

Defense attorneys said five jurors came forward after her mistrial to say they were deadlocked only on the manslaughter count and agreed she was not guilty on the other counts. But they didn’t tell the judge.

The defense also argues that juror affidavits “reflect a clear and unequivocal determination that Ms. Read is not guilty” and support their request for an evidentiary hearing on whether the jurors found her not guilty of the two charges.

Read’s lawyers cited a ruling in the case of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in which a federal appeals court earlier this year ordered the judge overseeing his trial to investigate defense claims of juror bias and to determine whether his death sentence should remain in effect.

“Under the commonwealth’s logic, no defendant claimed that the jury acquitted her but failed to announce that the verdict would be entitled to further investigation, no matter how clear and well-founded her claim was,” the defense said.

The defense also argued that the judge abruptly announced the mistrial in court without first asking each juror to confirm their conclusions on each count.

“There is no indication that the court considered alternatives, in particular investigation of partial sentences,” the defense said. “And counsel was not given a full opportunity to be heard. The court never asked for counsel’s opinion or even mentioned the word mistrial.”

In August, a judge ruled that Read could be retried on these charges. “Absent a verdict announced in open court here, a new trial of the suspect would not violate the principle of double criminality,” Judge Beverly Cannone said in her ruling.

In their letter to the court, prosecutors wrote that there is no basis to dismiss charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident.

They noted in the letter that the jury said the case was deadlocked three times before declaring a mistrial. Prosecutors said the “defendant was given a meaningful opportunity to be heard on any purported alternative.”

“The defendant was not acquitted of any charges because the jury did not make, announce and confirm any overt and public verdicts of acquittal,” they wrote. “That requirement is not a mere formalism, a ministerial act or an empty technical matter. It is a fundamental safeguard that ensures that no juror’s position is mistaken, misrepresented or coerced by other jurors.”

Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston Police Department, had been drinking heavily before dropping him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer . . They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy revealed that O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

The defense portrayed Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually murdered in Albert’s home and then dragged outside. They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who kept them from considering law enforcement officers as suspects.