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Cleared of murder charges after her second trial, Karen Read of Massachusetts could pursue legal action against a number of individuals and government entities involved in the case against her, according to legal analysts.
“She has a way to sue both the individual officers who are violating her privacy who did an investigation that was not complete, that was inaccurate, that was incompetent,” said Linda Kenney Baden, a New York City defense attorney whose clients have included Aaron Hernandez, Phil Spector and Casey Anthony.
“And also she (may) sue the Commonwealth and the Massachusetts State Police for not training their officers to do a competent investigation and training their officers not to invade her privacy – and which results in her false arrest under the Constitution of the United States.”
She may also have a malicious prosecution claim, Kenney Baden said.
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Karen Read at her murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., June 3, 2025. (Libby O’Neill/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
Read lost two jobs after being charged with murder, a charge she was cleared of Wednesday, and sold her house to help cover multimillion-dollar legal fees.
Under the circumstances, the more people or entities she sues who are covered by insurance, the better.
“She wants a whole bunch of lawyers in, because she wants policies, money, policies to collect against,” Kenney Baden said.
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Officer John O’Keefe (Boston Police Department)
On the other hand, she’s facing a lawsuit of her own from O’Keefe’s family.
“The more money that she can get, the more money that the O’Keefes are going to seek,” the lawyer said. But in the process, Read could also file a cross claim against the two Canton bars that are also facing lawsuits from the O’Keefe family.
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“She can still file against the bars for serving her, because the jurors found that she drove intoxicated,” Kenney Baden said.
David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area defense lawyer and former prosecutor, told Fox News Digital the recently cleared Read could set her sights on local police in Canton, state troopers, individual investigators and maybe even the state government.
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Peggy O’Keefe, mother of John O’Keefe, listens to testimony during the Karen Read retrial in Norfolk Superior Court June 11, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
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“Keep an eye on the prosecutor’s office,” he said. “Through discovery, if it comes out that they were in cahoots, they will be brought into it.”
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office brought in a special prosecutor to handle Read’s second trial after the first ended with a deadlocked jury and a fired lead homicide investigator.
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The detective, Michael Proctor, sent confidential information about the case to civilians, according to a state police review that led to his firing. He also appeared to mock Read’s medical conditions, which legal experts say could be considered an invasion of privacy.
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Paul O’Keefe, brother of John O’Keefe, listens to testimony during the Karen Read murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., May 9, 2025. (Mark Stockwell/The Sun Chronicle via AP, Pool)
“She theoretically could sue one or more of the officers or investigators for violation of her constitutional rights, for fabricating reports or false submission of evidence,” said Randolph Rice, a Maryland-based attorney who has followed the case. “Then the issue becomes the supervising agency, [which] may deny liability because they will argue that it’s outside the scope of that investigating officer’s employment.”
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He said embattled police may be in the clear, however, because they did establish probable cause before a grand jury.