Karen Read
A former adjunct professor at Bentley College, Karen Read faces up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
Prosecutors allege Read hit O’Keefe with her SUV after a night of drinking at several bars in Canton and left him to die in a snowbank outside the home of another Boston Police Officer.
Read is also charged with manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol as well as leaving a scene of personal injury and death.
Defense attorneys argue Read is the victim of a police cover-up.
David Yannetti
The first lawyer to be hired by Karen Read, David Yannetti is a former prosecutor who gained recognition for securing convictions in the brutal 1997 abduction and murder of 10 year old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge.
Yannetti founded his own criminal defense practice in 1999.
In 2008, Yannetti won a retrial that helped a man convicted of murder 16 years earlier walk free by bringing forward a third-party culprit defense, which is now a key strategy for Karen Read’s legal team.
Alan Jackson
A high-profile attorney who once defended actor Kevin Spacey in a criminal case on Nantucket, Alan Jackson is one of the attorneys representing Karen Read.
During his time as a prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, Jackson convinced a jury to convict former music producer Phil Spector in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003.
Jackson has since become a famed defense attorney who has represented plenty of high-profile clients, including disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in his L.A. rape trial, a case he lost.
But Jackson has also celebrated plenty of legal victories. He helped clear an NBA player and a Saudi prince from the charges they were facing in separate cases.
In 2019, Jackson successfully defended actor Kevin Spacey in a criminal sexual assault case on the island of Nantucket. Jackson elicited testimony from the accuser’s mother who admitted she deleted information off her son’s phone before turning it over to police. Spacey’s accuser refused to testify and the case was dropped.
Jackson is a partner at the Los Angeles-based law firm Werksman Jackson & Quinn LLP.
Elizabeth Little
Working alongside Alan Jackson in his Los Angeles-based law firm, Elizabeth Little has argued a number of motions in Karen Read’s case.
Little helped Jackson defend actor Kevin Spacey in his Nantucket trial, leading to the charges against the Hollywood star to be dismissed.
Robert Alessi
An addition to Read’s legal team at the end of 2024, Robert Alessi has argued a number of motions before Judge Beverly Cannone on behalf of the defense team leading up to the retrial.
Most notably, Alessi faced questions from the judge about the defense team’s payment to crash reconstruction experts who testified in Read’s first trial.
Alessi is an attorney based in New York.
Martin Weinberg
Martin Weinberg led the defense team’s appeals to try to get two of the charges against Karen Read dropped before her retrial.
Weinberg requested dismissal of two of the charges against her, arguing that after the mistrial was declared, several jurors told the defense that Read had actually been acquitted by the jury, despite jury communications with Judge Beverly Cannone during deliberations that explicitly stated they were deadlocked on the charges.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld Cannone’s decision. A federal appeals court also cleared the way for Read’s retrial on all the charges against her.
Victoria George
A surprising last-minute addition to Karen Read’s legal team, Victoria George served as a juror in Read’s first trial.
George, an attorney who received her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law, was an alternate juror, meaning she listened to all of the testimony but did not participate in the deliberations that ended with a mistrial in July of 2024.
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan
One of the attorneys who defended notorious Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger in federal court, Hank Brennan was appointed to serve as special prosecutor in Karen Read’s retrial.
Brennan has aggressively attacked the defense’s theories that John O’Keefe was not hit by Read’s SUV, calling it a tactic meant to confuse the jury.
Prosecutor Adam Lally
After presenting the evidence investigators say proves Karen Read hit her boyfriend with her SUV, prosecutor Adam Lally is not leading the Commonwealth’s case during the second trial.
Lally, who is scheduled to remain on the trial team for Read’s retrial, became a familiar face for court watchers when he served as the lone voice questioning witnesses for the prosecution.
Judge Beverly Cannone
Appointed to the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1985, Judge Beverly Cannone spent most of her career as a public defender.
Then-Governor Deval Patrick nominated Cannone to serve as a judge in Quincy District Court in 2009. He appointed her to the bench at Norfolk Superior Court in 2014.
Cannone presided over Read’s first trial.
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