DEDHAM, MASS. (WHDH) - Karen Read and her defense team entered Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham Tuesday before calling more witnesses to the stand in her murder retrial.
Testimony continued with Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, a day after defense attorney Robert Alessi accused the prosecution of trying to mislead the jury about holes on the back of Boston police officer John O’Keefe’s sweatshirt.
Read is accused of killing O’Keefe, her boyfriend, by backing into him with her car after a night of drinking and leaving him to die in the snow in January 2022. Read’s defense argues she is being framed in a police coverup.
Laposata, who began her testimony Monday, continued to give her analysis of O’Keefe’s injuries. In her medical opinion as former Rhode Island chief medical examiner, the blunt force trauma to the back of O’Keefe’s skull is not consistent with falling back onto a flat surface, as the commonwealth claims.
Instead, Laposata believes that his injuries were caused by a fall onto a ridged object.
On Tuesday, she also shared her opinion that O’Keefe’s body showed no signs of hypothermia despite it being listed as a cause of death on his autopsy report. She explained that the extensive injuries to O’Keefe’s brain likely killed him within 20 minutes, and were solely responsible for his death.
The defense also questioned Laposata on the injuries to O’Keefe’s right arm.
“Were you able to determine, from your review of the medical records, whether the injuries that you see on Mr. O’Keefe’s right arm were premortem or postmortem?” asked defense attorney Alan Jackson.
“Yes, I can determine that. They were inflicted prior to death,” Laposata said.
“Do you have an opinion as to whether or not the wounds that you see, the patterned injury that you see on Mr. O’Keefe’s right arm is consistent with an animal bite or claw marks?” Jackson asked.
“Yes. It is, very much,” Laposata said.
The defense then called Dr. Andrew Rentschler, a crash reconstruction expert who is expected to be the final witness on the stand.
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