DEDHAM, Mass. — The second murder trial of Karen Read, whose case has sparked a national debate on police accountability and won her legions of devoted fans, will begin Tuesday with both sides laying out conflicting theories of how her Boston police officer boyfriend ended up dead.
Read is accused of striking John O’Keefe with her SUV in 2022 and leaving him to die alone in the snow outside of a house party in the town of Canton, a suburb about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Boston. She has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene.
During the first trial last year, prosecutors said Read intentionally backed into O’Keefe after she dropped him off at a house party and returned hours later to find him dead. The defense said she was a victim of a vast police conspiracy and that O’Keefe was fatally beaten by another law enforcement officer at the party.
A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.
After the trial, the defense unsuccessful moved to have two of the charges dismissed after they said several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request from Read to delay her trial on double jeopardy grounds
Many of the factors that made the first trial must-see television will be featured in the second.
Many of the same witnesses are back as are Read’s aggressive defense team and dozens of her supporters camped out near the courthouse — many carrying “Free Karen Read” signs and wearing pink. Read, who has been featured in several documentaries about her case, has become a minor celebrity.
The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. Brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, the former defense attorney has represented a number of prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.
Brennan stands to benefit from a pretrial ruling from Judge Beverly Cannone that defense attorneys can’t mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements. They can develop a case against two law enforcement officers but cannot implicate Albert’s nephew, Colin Albert, as they did in the first trial.
“I view it as a blow to the defense strategy but not a knockout punch,” Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said of the ruling. “All the defense needs to do is create reasonable doubt about Karen (Read’s) guilt, and that doesn’t require pointing to an alternative perpetrator as a matter of law.”
Legal experts expect prosecutors to focus on Read’s behavior as they did during the first trial — her volatile relationship with O’Keefe and their night of heavy drinking. They also predict the prosecution will lay out a stronger and more coherent case that Read clipped O’Keefe with the back of her SUV and sent him tumbling to the ground — using data from her car, video and stronger expert testimony.
“The Commonwealth will focus on the theme drilled into us since middle school — Drinking, Driving, Deadly Consequences,” Michael Coyne, the dean of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, said in an email, adding that he expects prosecutors to avoid mistakes of the first trial, where several of their early witnesses appeared to help the defense more than the state.
The defense is expected to offer evidence that what they see as a sloppy police investigation was biased and that law enforcement officers set Read up to protect the real killers. They could be helped by an audit of the Canton Police Department released last month that found several mistakes with the investigation — although no evidence of a cover-up.
One of the key witnesses will be former State Trooper Michael Proctor. He led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found that he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues.
“Michael Proctor and his dismissal from the force may very well serve as the elephant in the courtroom throughout the proceedings,” Medwed said.