Prosecutors have a Wednesday deadline to respond to Read’s appeal to dismiss two charges.
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Prosecutors in the Karen Read murder trial are hoping to retest the SUV that they say Read hit and killed her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, with on a snowy night nearly three years ago.
They believe the data could help prove — or disprove — their case ahead of the retrial, which is expected to begin in January.
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The motion comes as the prosecution faces a major deadline on Wednesday.
Wednesday is the deadline for the prosecutors to respond to an appeal that Read's legal team filed to have counts one and three dismissed on grounds of double jeopardy — second degree murder and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death.
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Read's trial ended over the summer in a mistrial, but her lawyers claim that afterwards, several jurors revealed to them that the jury was actually in agreement on not guilty verdicts on two of the charges. Read's attorneys claim the reason for the hung jury was because they could not come to an agreement on the charge manslaughter while driving under the influence.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed to review this, and it's given the state until Wednesday to respond.
This deadline comes amid that new filing by prosecutors, requesting another look at Read's Lexus SUV — the alleged murder weapon. They claimed that when investigators first examined the vehicle, significant data was likely not recovered because of a programming error. But now, due to software updates, they say more data can be found.
"It's kind of surprising that neither side has dug as deeply into that computer and the forensics examination behind it so that you could properly instruct the jury at least to what the computer indicates that vehicle and the driver were likely doing at the time," NBC10 Boston legal analyst Michael Coyne said.
Prosecutors have requested a hearing within 14 days to get approval for the testing. The filing was dated Thursday, and obtained by NBC10 on Tuesday. Meanwhile, if and when the prosecution responds to Read's lawyers' appeal Wednesday, her team would then have until Oct. 25 to respond back.
