Karen Read’s lawyers have petitioned the Massachusetts highest court to dismiss two charges she faces in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend nearly three years ago — including second-degree murder.
Read is accused of deliberately running over her boyfriend, 45-year-old John O’Keefe, with her SUV and then leaving him to die outside a fellow officer’s house after a night of drinking during a blizzard in January 2022.
The 44-year-old financial analyst was charged with murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. She has maintained her innocence, saying she was the victim of a frame job.
The high-profile case, which made national headlines, ended in a mistrial earlier this year after a deadlocked jury failed to reach a unanimous decision following several days of deliberation.
According to Read’s defense team, five jurors have since revealed the jury was only deadlocked on the manslaughter charge but found her not guilty on the other two charges, second-degree murder and leaving the scene.
A new trial was scheduled for January 2025. In August, Judge Beverly Cannone ruled that Read could be retried again on those two charges.
“Where there was no verdict announced in open court here, retrial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” she wrote.
But in a brief filed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday, defense attorney Martin Weinberg disagreed with Cannone’s ruling, arguing that trying her again on those two charges would indeed constitute unconstitutional double jeopardy if all 12 jurors had attested to a decision to acquit Read on the charges.
“Surely, that cannot be the law. Indeed, it must not be the law,” Weinberg wrote in the 77-page document.
The defense also argued Read is entitled to a post-verdict inquiry of whether her claims are true about the jurors, and that the judge didn’t have to declare a mistrial on counts on which the jury was not deadlocked.
“For the foregoing reasons, Ms. Read respectfully requests that this Honorable Court reverse the trial court and order Counts 1 and 3 dismissed,” Weinberg wrote referring to charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident.
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office has until Oct. 16 to file a response.
With News Wire Services
