DEDHAM, MASS. (WHDH) - The prosecution and defense each gave their opening statements Tuesday in the Karen Read murder retrial.
Read is accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe by hitting him with her car and leaving him to die in a snowbank in January 2022. Her lawyers argue she is being framed. Her first trial last summer ended in a mistrial.
On Tuesday, there was a heavy police presence outside the courthouse in Dedham to ensure any protesting happens away from the 18 jurors.
While asked about her confidence level going into the courthouse in comparison to her first trial, Read said, “I’m always confident in my team.”
Both sides told starkly different stories about what happened on Jan. 29, 2022.
Prosecution’s opening statement
In his statement Tuesday, special prosecutor Hank Brennan stood and painted a picture of the emergency response the morning O’Keefe was found dead. He spoke about paramedics arriving at 34 Fairview Road in Canton to find O’Keefe unresponsive in the snow, and Read screaming at the scene.
“You’ll hear her words, through firefighter Nuttall, she said, ‘I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,'” Brennan said.
He described O’Keefe as a “family man” and also said Read and O’Keefe were on their way to ending their relationship at the time. Brennan said O’Keefe, Read, and a group of friends went out drinking the night before he died.
“You’re going to be able to read text messages of their conversations on Jan. 28, 2022. You will see the tension and the unraveling of the relationship. You will read about the discord between the defendant and Mr. O’Keefe. You will see that when he would ignore her calls, they would become incessant. When he would try to push away, she would come closer,” Brennan said.
The prosecution’s strategy focused on cellphone data and its temperature that night, and Brennan also presented a clip of Read’s own interview where she talked about what “could have” happened.
“I want to tell you something about data and science before we get to that night. I had mentioned that underneath John’s body was a cellphone. A cellphone is an amazing piece of technology. It is like a computer. It carries extraordinary data. And when they found the cellphone, the only companion to John O’Keefe that night, they studied the cellphone and there’ll be some remarkable data,” Brennan said.
He said location and health data collected by O’Keefe’s iPhone points to the phone and his body being left in the cold all night long.
The commonwealth put a particular emphasis on the temperature of his cellphone battery on the morning of Jan. 29. They say new data shows the phone’s battery registered at 77 degrees when Read and O’Keefe arrived at 34 Fairview Road.
Brennan said the battery temperature dropped 5 degrees the moment O’Keefe got out of Read’s car, then slowly declined over the next five and a half hours as his phone lay beneath O’Keefe’s body and the frozen ground.
“And coincidentally, at 6:06 when they start to move him, the cold air hits that cellphone battery and drops from 50 to 43 degrees,” Brennan said. “When they lift him, that cellphone battery then shot down to 37 degrees. Kerry Roberts picks it up and puts it in her pocket and it immediately starts to warm as she moves, the healthcare data showing movement starts again.”
Watch the prosecution’s entire opening statement here.
Defense’s opening statement
Read’s attorney Alan Jackson got up and immediately stated that O’Keefe did not die from being hit by a vehicle. He said the jury will hear that O’Keefe sustained abrasions consistent with a dog bite.
“The story you’ll hear is about an investigation that was riddled with errors from the beginning — a rush to judgement, conflicted and corrupted from the start,” Jackson said. “Corrupted by bias, corrupted by incompetence, corrupted by deceit. Finally, it was corrupted by a deliberate effort to avoid and cover up the very truth that you are seeking.”
Jackson spoke to the court about Michael Proctor, a recently fired Massachusetts State Police trooper who was the lead investigator in the case. Jackson said the investigation was not conducted properly. He also spoke of disparaging texts Proctor sent about Read, which ultimately got Proctor fired from his job.
“You’ll see from the evidence in this case that this case carries a malignancy — one that has spread through the investigation, it spread through the prosecution from the very start. From the jump. A cancer that cannot be cut out, a cancer that cannot be cured. And that cancer has a name. And his name is Michael Proctor,” he said.
Jackson told jurors the case is a police coverup orchestrated by Proctor.
“At the end of this trial, we’ll ask you to return the only verdicts — all three of them — that are consistent with the evidence, the science, the truth, and justice. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty,” he said.
When Read was asked whether she had any plans of taking the stand in the retrial, she said she had no comment.
Watch the defense’s entire opening statement here.
Witnesses take the stand
The prosecution called on two key witnesses to take the stand on Tuesday. Both witnesses took the stand in the first trial.
Timothy Nuttall, 28, a Canton firefighter and paramedic, was one of the first people to respond to the scene in 2022. Nuttall testified that he saw no signs of life when he assessed John O’Keefe and also saw a woman with blood on her face.
Nuttall identified that woman as Karen Read. He also testified that when he asked Read if she knew the victim and she responded by saying, “I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.” In the first trial, Nuttall testified Read had only said it twice.
“There was just a question of how many times the ‘I hit him I hit him;’ came up. It was three times,” said Nuttall in court.
One of Read’s lawyers Alan Jackson responded by asking, “Were you advised that’s not what you said at your testimony last year? You said it was two times last year.”
“I honestly don’t recall,” responded Nuttall.
“But you just saw that and you went over that three weeks ago?,” asked Jackson.
“I believe so, yes,” said Nuttall. “I’d previously testified possibly to two, but it was three.”
The second witness was one of two women with Karen Read when they discovered O’Keefe’s body, Kerry Roberts.
Roberts says Read woke her up at 5 a.m., frantically saying “Kerry! Kerry! Kerry! John’s dead!” And hung up the phone.
Read eventually was with Roberts, sitting in the back seat of her car. Roberts said they went to check O’Keefe’s home, but did not find him there.
They eventually went to the address of the party, where Read said she dropped O’Keefe off. Roberts described a frantic Read spotting O’Keefe’s body.
Roberts testified she couldn’t see O’Keefe’s body due to the snow.
“And as we approach the house, Karen from the backseat is now screaming ‘there he is, there he is, let me the f out of this car,’ and she’s now kicking the back door to get out,” said Roberts.
Roberts also testified that Read pointed out her broken taillight, as the car was sitting at O’Keefe’s house.
Roberts will continue her testimony Wednesday morning.
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Buffer zone outside of the courthouse
Judge Beverly Cannone instituted a wider buffer zone in the retrial.
The buffer zone aims to keep demonstrators from getting too close to the courthouse.
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7NEWS Legal Analyst weighs in on opening statements
7News Legal Analyst Tom Hoopes weighed in on Tuesday’s opening statements.
Hoopes says each sides’ introductions have the ability to quickly sway the jury, and only time will tell if the prosecution’s approach will be convincing enough.
“Well, the science, curiously, is that 80% of jurors have their mind made up after opening statements, which is why you see so much focus on what was happening today,” said Hoopes. “Time will tell if the prosecution can, with its data, make out its case, it will be fine. If they can’t, then the defense is gonna get up and say ‘I told you in the opening, and I’m telling you now, they couldn’t prove the case.'”
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