Jurors in the Karen Read trial went home for the weekend after telling the judge Friday that they couldn’t agree, only to be told to keep trying.
The jury must decide whether prosecutors have proven that Read drunkenly and angrily slammed into her Boston police officer boyfriend with her Lexus SUV and left him to die. The defense challenged the evidence and suggested that one or more colleagues killed John O’Keefe, dumped his body outside in a panic and then framed Read to cover it up.
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On their fourth day of deliberations in the two-month murder trial, a foreperson told the judge that they hadn’t reached a unanimous verdict despite an “exhaustive review of the evidence and our diligent consideration of all disputed evidence.
But Judge Beverly Cannone told the six men and six women to take lunch and try again, and they did for several more hours. “Clear your heads, we’ll start fresh on Monday,” Cannone told them later Friday.
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Tuey-Rodriguez instructions
After the note was submitted, Karen Read’s defense asked the judge to take the first step towards a mistrial.
The jury had the incentive of getting this done before the holiday weekend and still couldn’t come to a conclusion. Now there’s talk of implementing what’s called the dynamite instruction, something legal experts say usually results in a quick verdict.
“Our position is the jury should be read the Tuey-Rodriguez instruction and go from there.” said defense attorney David Yannetti.
“I will submit that it is far far far too early to give them Tuey-Rodriguez instruction or anything close to that.” said ADA Adam Lally.
Legal experts say the rare step is only taken when jurors are at a hopeless impasse because it runs the risk of encouraging those who may be holding out on one side or the other to change their opinions and go along with the majority.
“What the instruction is saying is that if we were to empanel another group of 12 jurors there’s no reason to think they’d decide the case any differently than you so please consider the viewpoints of your fellow jurors.” said retired justice Jay Blitzman
Blitzman says if the case does have to be retried it would likely happen within the year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
