Karen Read watches attorney Robert Alessi speak while answering questions about the defense team’s relationship with crash reconstruction expert witnesses during a hearing in front of Judge Beverly Cannone in Norfolk Superior Court at Dedham, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025.
Ahead of Karen Read's retrial, the prosecution has suggested in court that the defense "instigated" the since-closed federal investigation of how the Norfolk District Attorney's Office handled the case.
The claim was included as the prosecution moved, in new court filings, to keep several defense witnesses from testifying. The battle is playing out with just over two weeks before jury selection is slated to begin in Norfolk Superior Court.
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"The Commonwealth has a good faith belief that the defense instigated the now-closed federal investigation and actively participated in providing selective information and materials to the United States Attorney's Office to attempt to propel and shape the federal investigation," the prosecution wrote in a filing on Friday about crash reconstruction experts from a firm called ARCCA.
The defense has relied on an ARCCA report included in the federal investigation, which brought no charges of impropriety but helped propel the Karen Read case, with her team's allegations of a cover-up, to a national news story. That report suggested it was unlikely that John O'Keefe was killed by Read's SUV backing into him, as prosecutors alleged in charging her.
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ARCCA experts were allowed to testify in the first trial, which ended in a hung jury, but jurors weren't allowed to be told that they were hired as part of a federal investigation. Last week, the defense had asked the court to let jurors in the retrial be told that the U.S. Attorney's Office was the organization that hired those experts, saying, among other things, it influences their credibility, as being neutral.
But prosecutors have pushed back, saying it's still not clear what relationship the defense had with federal prosecutors under previous administrations, and that the defense gave material to federal investigators without state prosecutors' knowledge, which may have influenced what ARCCA's team was able to base their conclusions on.
Noting that the defense has only recently disclosed that they paid ARCCA in connection with the investigation, a point of contention at recent hearings, the new filing says that new information suggests "the defense/ARCCA relationship appears cozier than once portrayed."
A footnote followed, reading, "Notably, photographs have recently been discovered by the Commonwealth and subsequently produced in discovery, depicting Dr. [Andrew] Rentschler attending a private luncheon and conversing with the defendant's father at this luncheon."
It wasn't immediately clear what lunch event the pair attended, and Friday's motion didn't share specific evidence of how the defense would have instigated the federal investigation.
The experts that Special Assistant District Attorney Hank Brennan filed to exclude in whole or in part are Garrett Wing and retired FBI agent Michael Easter, as well as the
The prosecution also argued for keeping their biomechanical expert Dr. Judson Welcher from testifying, as the defense had sought.
