Video of Karen Read’s SUV at Canton police headquarters after she allegedly fatally struck her boyfriend, Boston Police Office John O’Keefe, with it is a big part of her new motion to dismiss the murder case against her.
Karen Read's defense team is moving to dismiss all charges against her in her high-profile murder case, claiming in a filing made public Thursday that she "has been severely prejudiced by the Commonwealth's pervasive misconduct."
The motion to dismiss, "for extraordinary governmental misconduct," was originally filed in Norfolk Superior Court under seal. It was released with redactions Thursday — large portions of the 147-page document are blacked out.
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The defense said that prosecutors suppressed video surveillance footage from Canton police that would show she's innocent and misled the jury with apparently altered footage from a garage, known as a sallyport, during the first trial, making "a mockery of Ms. Read's right to due process." The defense has previously raised questions about the sallyport video.
They also said that information from a key witness was kept from them until long after she testified, preventing them from bringing up inconsistencies about a meeting with a Canton police sergeant before the jury.
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"As a result of this extraordinary governmental misconduct, Ms. Read has been permanently and irreversibly denied her constitutional right to a fair trail. No remedy other than a dismissal can adequately address the significant harm caused to Ms. Read and the injustice of proceeding without the lost exculpatory evidence that was in the Commonwealth's possession," the motion reads, before several redacted lines.
The Norfolk County District Attorney's Office didn't comment on the move to dismiss the case when reached by NBC10 Boston Thursday. The office will have the chance to file a response in court.
Read the redacted filing here:
NBC10 Boston legal analyst Michael Coyne said he doesn't think Cannone will allow the motion to dismiss the case, saying, "I think at this point she wants to move this case forward to trial."
Read had a motion to dismiss the case denied before trial, and another motion to dismiss two of the charges against her denied after the trial. She's appealed the latter ruling to Massachusetts top court, then federal court.
While the redactions in the latest filing leave some of the defense's justifications for their arguments unknown to the public, they did describe last week in other court filings what sensitive information they were including, citing references to things that were said in private discussions between lawyers and Judge Beverly Cannone in previous proceedings, information that's under a federal protective order and "communications obtained from law enforcement witnesses" that were impounded by both Cannone and a federal judge.
Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, by hitting him with her SUV outside a home in Canton in January 2022. She's pleaded not guilty, and alleges she was framed.
Read was in court on Tuesday for a high-stakes motions hearing, where the sides discussed the prosecution's allegations that the defense acted improperly during the first trial, not disclosing relationship and payment with their crash reconstruction experts.
The defense's allegations in the latest motion to dismiss center on these allegations:
- Prosecutors producing "dribs and drabs of various clips of video surveillance" from the Canton Police Department's system without documentation like evidence logs that would show who had the video. The defense says it's gotten four incomplete batches of footage from the day O'Keefe was found dead, some after the trial, and that the department didn't preserve more surveillance footage as they were required to do. The footage is important for establishing whether Read's SUV had a damaged taillight when it was taken to the Canton Police Department — prosecutors say it was broken when Read fatally struck O'Keefe.
- Investigators allegedly not properly documenting a meeting with witness Jennifer McCabe, whose Google search "hos long to die in cold" has been central to the defense's claim that there was a coverup over who really killed O'Keefe — the defense says evidence shows she made the search at 2:27 a.m., while the prosecution says it was after she and Read found O'Keefe's body in the snow.
- An entire third section of the statement of facts is redacted — it's unclear what it refers to.
The defense says that the misconduct violates Read's due process rights under Massachusetts' Declaration of Rights and the rights she's granted under the Constitution's fifth, sixth and 14th amendments, as well as evidence-sharing of rules of Massachusetts criminal trials.
