Tuesday’s hearing will pick back up again on Thursday, with the April1 trial date looming closer.
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There were major new developments Tuesday in the Karen Read murder case.
The start of her second murder trial could change, as her defense team continues to push to have two of her charges dismissed.
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Attorneys for Read have gone before a state court judge, a Supreme Judicial Court judge and a federal judge seeking to have two of her charges thrown out. They have all denied her request, so they have appealed to the First Circuit of Appeals, which has yet to rule. So the defense is asking to delay the start of her retrial.
"Certainly if it were possible to have all of this resolved before moving forward it would be ideal. We are ready but we are just accommodating the First Circuit Appeal," defense attorney Alan Jackson said in court Tuesday.
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But Judge Beverly Cannone indicated that delaying the trial would be problematic because the jury commissioner's office has been working for months to get many jurors available for selection in Read's second trial.
It was an eventful day of court Tuesday, as Cannone, the defense and the prosecution resolved a number of motions. Perhaps the biggest was the one related to ARCCA accident reconstruction witnesses.
Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, by backing her SUV into him outside a home in Canton in January 2022.
The accident reconstruction experts testified during Read's first trial last summer that the damage to Read's taillight was inconsistent with striking a human. But Cannone said her defense team repeatedly and deliberately misrepresented the relationship they had with those witnesses because they had already talked about their testimony before they went on the stand, and they paid the witnesses after the trial but never disclosed it to the court.
Despite that, Cannone ruled that those witnesses can testify and the defense won't be sanctioned.
Jury selection is currently scheduled to get underway on April 1.
