Karen Read made a brief court appearance on Monday to set dates going forward for the high-profile murder case against her involving her Boston police officer boyfriend that ended in a mistrial earlier this month.
Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
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The judge will hear oral arguments on a defense motion to dismiss two of the three charges against her on Aug. 9, and a retrial was scheduled for Jan. 27. The court hearing lasted under five minutes.
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Here's what we learned Monday about the new timeline for the case, and what a second trial could look like:
When will the second Karen Read trial take place?
The next hearing in the case will be on Aug. 9, when Judge Beverly Cannone said she will hear oral arguments from both sides on the defense's motion to dismiss the second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a collision causing death charges.
The defense contends that five jurors have come forward to say that the jury unanimously reached a not guilty verdict on two of the three charges against Read, including murder. The jurors reported being deadlocked only on the remaining charge of manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and trying her again for murder would be unconstitutional double jeopardy, they said.
"It speaks volumes that nobody has come forward to contradict what they said," defense attorney David Yannetti said outside of court Monday.
The defense also argues Cannone abruptly announced the mistrial without questioning the jurors about where they stood on each of the three charges Read faced and without giving lawyers for either side a chance to comment.
Once Cannone rules on the motion to dismiss, she said she fully expects an appeal to be filed. To provide time for that appeal to be resolved she suggested scheduling the retrial for Jan. 27, 2025, which happens to be two days before the third anniversary of O'Keefe's death. A final pretrial hearing was also scheduled for Jan. 14.
But the Jan. 27 retrial date could still change, as Yannetti said he has another trial starting several weeks before that and he might not be able to juggle both cases at the same time. Cannone said she will reach out to the judge in Yannetti's other case to see if something can be worked out that would allow the Jan. 27 date to stand.
Could any of the charges against Karen Read be dismissed?
Two legal experts told NBC10 Boston they think it's unlikely that either of the charges against Read will be dismissed following the Aug. 9 hearing.
"I think the commonwealth has the stronger leg to stand on in terms of their legal argument," said Katherine Loftus, a Boston attorney with Loftus & Loftus PC. "Sometimes it's difficult to differentiate between what it seems would be the most fair and what the law actually requires. What it would require the judge to do if they're going to call all the witnesses back in to poll the jury is essentialy overstepping the court's boundaries, and that's not really what the jury system is about."
"She probably should have been acquitted on it," she said of Read. "They should have asked the judge. That they didn't do that, the law really doesn't allow us to Monday morning quarterback."
Michael Coyne, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, largely agreed.
"Mostly, people say if you've got a verdict, let's figure it out and we'll go from there. But you really have to think about the sanctity of the jury's deliberations," he said. "It's hard enough to get people to serve on a jury. If you open the door to this where we're going to quiz you about internal conversations... That's a no-no, Massachusetts law is clear, unless it's about racial bias, unless the jury was prejudiced from the outset."
Will Alan Jackson return for the second trial?
NBC10 Boston's Eli Rosenberg said he confirmed Monday with Yannetti that defense attorney Alan Jackson will return for Read's second trial.
There had been some talk about whether Jackson would be back, and the fact that he was not in attendance for Monday's hearing only fueled that speculation.
What could the prosecution's strategy be?
Coyne said he thinks the prosecution will look to pare down its witness list in the second trial. Over 50 witnesses were called by the commonwealth the first time around.
"Trim the case, get the fat out of the case, don't focus as much on what the defendant's case is about -- the alleged conspiracy and all of that," he said. "Focus on the details of your case -- the excessive drinking, the snowy, snowy night and driving under those conditions and ultimately his death was caused by the defendant, as they see it. That has to be much tighter if they want to get a conviction on vehicular manslaughter."
Coyne said he thinks the prosecution will bring all three charges again, assuming there is no dismissal, though he believes it would be a better strategy to drop the murder charge and focus on the other two counts.
What could the defense's case look like?
"Well they've definitely got a big job to do as well," Coyne said, especially since it appears the jury in the first trial was leaning in favor of guilty on the manslaughter charge.
"What they have to do is focus on the reasonable doubt aspect of the case," he said. "Again, you've got a snowy night, accidents happen on snowy nights, you have a scapegoat, as they see it. I wouldn't pitch the broad conspiracy. I'd make it a scapegoat for sloppy police, assembly of evidence and all the work they did and all the mistakes they made. So it was sloppy, and I think the jury would accept that. I think they'd have an easier time selling a reasonable doubt argument and that she's a scapegoat as opposed to being framed. It sounds like a technical difference, but I do think that's a big difference. I'm not sure the jury bought the argument that there was a massive conspiracy here."
