DEDHAM, MASS. (WHDH) - Karen Read returned to Norfolk Superior Court Friday as her defense team asked Judge Beverly Cannone to throw out two of three charges against her.
Read’s hearing began near 2 p.m. and came just over a month after Cannone declared a mistrial in Read’s closely-watched second degree murder case.
The hearing ended after roughly one hour with Cannone taking the prosecution and the defense’s arguments under advisement.
Read is accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her car and leaving him to die outside the Canton home of another police officer in January 2022.
Her defense has claimed she is being framed, saying O’Keefe actually died after a fight inside the home.
Jury selection in Read’s first trial started in late April. The case went to the jury in late June after the prosecution and the defense together called more than 70 witnesses to testify.
After five days of deliberations, jurors told Cannone they remained deadlocked and Cannone declared a mistrial.
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office quickly said it would re-try Read. Within a matter of days, though, the defense said it heard from jurors who said they would have acquitted Read on charges including second degree murder.
Jurors said they were split on one remaining charge of manslaughter while driving drunk, according to the defense, and never told Cannone about their agreement on other counts due to confusion over the process of delivering a split verdict.
The defense argued re-trying Read on all three counts would amount to double jeopardy.
The prosecution pushed back, saying charges should stay in place since the jury never officially delivered a not guilty verdict.
Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham was already busy by 12 p.m. Friday, with supporters of the O’Keefe family and supporters of Read gathering outside the courthouse. Both groups held signs and cheered as passing vehicles honked.
Once court proceedings got underway, new defense attorney Martin Weinberg reiterated that there is “strong and uncontradicted evidence” that the jury was unanimous in its not guilty agreement on the charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly crash.
Though details about deliberations came to light after the trial, Weinberg said Cannone must act on them.
If she does not dismiss the charges, the defense has asked Cannone to reach out to jurors to question them.
Legal experts have said such questioning is not possible. But Weinberg pointed to the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Boston Marathon bombings, saying a judge called two jurors back to determine whether there was an issue with their impartiality years after the Tsarnaev’s trial ended.
Weinberg said the defense is only asking Cannone to poll jurors about their verdicts, not the content of their private deliberations.
“Your honor has a lot of discretion,” Weinberg said, laying out options for Cannone, including asking jurors to file affidavits, or having court officers meet with jurors.
“Don’t make Ms. Read be the first time a defendant is retried on a murder charge after being acquitted of that charge,” Weinberg said.
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally spoke after Weinberg. He argued Cannone should deny the defense’s motion to dismiss charges, saying there was a “manifest necessity” that Cannone declare a mistrial.
Reiterating arguments from the prosecution’s filings, Lally said the defense had ample time to ask Cannone to poll the jury. But they chose not to.
Lally said defense attorneys have been “twisting logic into a pretzel” to make a case precedent fit in this situation.
Lally said neither the jury nor Cannone did anything wrong at the end of the trial. With the defense’s motion in mind, he said Cannone had no obligation to poll the jury and recalled several notes from jurors that plainly said the panel was deadlocked.
He continued, saying Cannone should not heed the defense’s request to poll the jury now.
“What defense counsel is proposing is prohibited by rules and the law over decades and centuries,” he said.
Friday’s hearing wrapped up near 3 p.m. In taking the arguments from both sides under advisement, Cannone made no immediate decision on the defense’s motion.
Read’s second trial is currently scheduled to begin on Jan. 27.
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