Karen Read's motion to disqualify the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office from prosecuting her upcoming murder trial has reportedly been denied.
The Boston Globe reported Friday that Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone announced the office of District Attorney Michael Morrissey would remain on the case in a ruling Thursday.
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Read is accused of killing John O'Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, in Canton, Massachusetts, in 2022. Her lawyers have alleged that she was framed in a massive coverup, which prosecutors have denied.
"Though certain comments by DA Morrissey crossed the line of permissible extrajudicial statements by a prosecutor, they are not egregious misconduct that is reasonably or substantially likely to materially prejudice or interfere with a fair trial," Cannone wrote in her ruling, the Globe reported.
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"District Attorney Morrissey is pleased the matter can now move expeditiously to trial," the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office said in a statement to NBC10 Boston, which has not independently seen the ruling.
Earlier this week, Canonne denied another motion from Read's lawyers to dismiss the case against her, clearing the way for the high-profile trial against her to go ahead on April 16.
Morrissey's office, meanwhile, has filed a motion of its own asking Cannone to establish a 500-foot "buffer zone" around the courthouse to keep protesters away. The motion also requests clothing and other objects displaying "Free Karen Read" to be banned in the vicinity of prospective jurors — something a rally organizer told NBC10 Boston would be an abuse of power that defies the First Amendment.
For a trial, one of the challenges that Cannone will face is to seat an impartial jury, given the intensive media attention the case has gotten amid the claims of a coverup, according to NBC10 Boston legal analyst Michael Coyne.
"You have people with pretty extreme on both sides of this issue already, and the court has to take pains to make sure that none of those people end in the jury itself," he said.
Coyne said earlier this week that it was unlikely Cannone would remove Morrissey from the case, calling it a "very high bar" to meet.
At a court appearance last week, attorneys for both sides presented arguments on three motions filed by the defense seeking records pertaining to various witnesses in the case.
The first motion sought records from the Massachusetts State Police internal affairs division pertaining to Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator in the Read case, who is under internal investigation for an undisclosed potential violation of department policy. Neither prosecutors nor Proctor's attorney objected to the motion.
The second motion sought phone records from Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and Kevin Albert from April 1, 2023 to present. Brian Albert and Brian Higgins were reportedly inside Brian Albert's house on the night of O'Keefe's death, and Kevin Albert is Brian's brother and a Canton police officer.
Defense attorney David Yannetti said the phone records would help to establish Read's argument that someone other than her was responsible for O'Keefe's death and there is a conspiracy to frame her for the murder.
"We're entitled to explore whether this investigation was conducted ethically," Yannetti said. "The records are relevant because they tend to show a cover up. They show a Canton police officer inserting himself into a case his department was conflicted out of precisely because he is an officer there."
"We need these records," he added. "Going to trial without them would violate my client's rights."
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the defense's statements were "largely inaccurate" and "injected with hyperbole" and the motion should be denied.
The final motion argued at last week's hearing was a request from the defense for phone records from Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and former Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz. Yannetti focused much of his argument on two phone calls between Albert and Brian Higgins around 2:22 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, less than four hours before O'Keefe's body was found on Albert's lawn.
Albert and Higgins both reportedly tried to claim the calls were accidental, but Yannetti said that seems impossible given both the late hour and the fact that they both said they were in bed at the time.
"When he was first confronted, Brian Higgins tried to claim it was a butt dial," Yannetti said. "I've never seen a case where there have been so many butt dials, to be frank."
Cannone allowed the first motion last week but did not rule on the second two.
