The judge in the Karen Read case won't release the names of the people who served on the deadlocked jury, she said in a filing Thursday, citing a juror whom the judge found to have a credible fear for her and her family's safety.
Also Thursday, Read's lawyers shared in a court filing that a fifth juror came forward to say that the jury would have voted to find Read not guilty on two of the charges she faced. The defense has been pushing to have those two charges dismissed, though the prosecution has pushed back.
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There's been intense interest in who served on the jury after Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial in the case, leaving unresolved whether Read was found guilty or innocent in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, especially given the defense's claims — which are as yet unconfirmed — that the jury was ready to acquit her.
Earlier this month, Cannone issued a temporary order keeping the jury list impounded, or out of public view, and she extended it indefinitely Thursday after a juror filed a motion to extend the order. It's an unusual move, according to one expert.
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“It’s certainly not the first time that jurors or witnesses in a case have felt threatened, but I haven’t seen anything quite like it, at least in Massachusetts before," said Chris Dearborn, a Suffolk Law professor.
Juror Doe also noted safety concerns that have come out of the trial.
"I am frightened for my personal safety as a result of learning that someone associated with this case has been criminally charged with intimidation," the juror, listed under the pseudonym Juror Doe, said in the filing.
The juror wrote that, if their name and the others' were made public, "we will be constantly threatened and harassed and there will likely be a physical confrontation at some point."
Dearborn said he saw those concerns as valid.
“I think the suggestion that there are legitimate concerns for the safety and privacy of the jurors is actually legitimate in this case.”
Read the new court filings, including Juror Doe's letter, here:
The order came amid the ongoing dispute involving how the jury might have voted if Cannone hadn't declared the mistrial. The new juror who came forward is allegedly the third to tell Read's lawyers directly that the jury was only deadlocked on one count and would have found her not guilty on the others.
The prosecution has said that would be inappropriate, and the charges shouldn't be dismissed.
What Juror Doe said about their fear, 'Turtleboy'
Juror Doe noted that the body could hear protestors "screaming and yelling" outside Norfolk Superior Court during the jury's deliberations, and that they thought they were being followed home from a secret location they'd been bused to after the mistrial was declared.
"I was so much in fear on my way home that I pulled over to the side of the road to see if I was being followed. Thankfully, I was not being followed, but that was (and remains) my mindset."
They referred to the blogger Aidan "Turtleboy" Kearney, who was charged with witness intimidation in the lead-up to the trial (He pleaded not guilty) and comments he made about purportedly identifying the jury's foreperson in the wake of the mistrial.
More Karen Read news
The juror said they were "not prepared or equipped to anticipate and prepare for any surprise personal attack" against them or their family.
"It was an honor to serve on the jury. It also was a significant sacrifice of time, which I understood and anticipated when I was selected. What I did not anticipate, however, was the likelihood that I and other members of the jury would become targets of intense public scrutiny and likely harassment campaigns strictly due to the outcome of our private deliberations," the juror wrote.
In her order, Cannone wrote that "there continues to be a risk of immediate and irreparable injury should the juror list be made public, and good cause exists for an indefinite extension of the Order of Impoundment."
NBC10 Boston reached out to Juror Doe's attorney, who declined to further comment.
Fifth juror comes forward, Karen Read's lawyers say
Read's lawyers have said the jury would have voted unanimously to find her not guilty on charges, including murder, citing the direct testimony of two jurors and what they'd heard from others on the thinking of two more jurors. They asked Cannone to dismiss both the charges, saying that re-trying her on them would amount to double jeopardy.
The Norfolk District Attorney's Office opposed the motion, saying in a court filing that the defense's argument was "premised upon hearsay, conjecture, and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations."
They also argued that "the jury's communications to the court explicitly indicated an impasse on all charges," and that Read's lawyers had the chance before the mistrial was declared to ask that Cannone inquire what charge or charges the jury was deadlocked on, but didn't take it. Read's team disputed that.
Alan Jackson, one of the two lead lawyers in Karen Read's defense, filed an affidavit Thursday saying that the day before, the fifth juror contacted him to say the jury had been "unanimous on 1 and 3," meaning the first and third charges brought in court, and wanted to stay anonymous.
Another lawyer on the defense, requesting again on Thursday that Cannone dismiss the charges they say weren't in dispute in the jury's deliberations, suggested that they could reach out to the three jurors who they'd spoken with to ask "them to affirm the accuracy of" the accounts the lawyers had shared in court.
The matter may come up at the next hearing in the case, on Monday in Norfolk Superior Court, which was initially put on the calendar to set the date of the retrial.
