Karen Read case: Massachusetts' top court denies Read's appeal to toss charges

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Feb 11, 2025

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BOSTON — The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did not return accused murderer Karen Read’s trial team the opinion they wanted, and ruled that in fact she can be tried again on charges related to the drunken, late night crash that prosecutors say took the life of her former boyfriend and Boston cop, John O’Keefe.

“Can posttrial accounts of jurors’ private deliberations that are inconsistent with their public communications in court render the declaration of a mistrial improper, or constitute an acquittal, where the jury did not announce or record a verdict in open court? We conclude that they cannot,” SJC Justice Serge Georges Jr. wrote in the opinion of that court filed this morning.

Read, 44, is charged with second-degree murder (Count 1), manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence (Count 2) and leaving the scene of an accident causing death (Count 3) in the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years at the time, on Jan. 29, 2022.

An eight-week trial held last summer ended in mistrial after the jurors, as Justice Georges summarizes in the SJC opinion, “deliberated for five days, sending progressively insistent notes to the judge about their inability to reach a unanimous verdict.” Based on the third note, Judge Beverly J. Cannone declared a mistrial.

Her attorneys say that several jurors reached out after the mistrial to say that they were only hung on Count 2, which is the OUI manslaughter charge, and were ready to acquit on the other charges. They say that no other juror has disputed this claim and that to continue to try her on these charges would be double jeopardy.

The SJC did not buy that argument.

“The jury clearly stated during deliberations that they had not reached a unanimous verdict on any of the charges and could not do so. Only after being discharged did some individual jurors communicate a different supposed outcome, contradicting their prior notes,” Georges wrote. “Such posttrial disclosures cannot retroactively alter the trial’s outcome — either to acquit or to convict. Accordingly, we affirm the trial judge’s denial of the motion to dismiss and the defendant’s request for a posttrial juror inquiry.”

Earlier coverage

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will issue its ruling this morning in Karen Read’s appeal asking that her murder charge be dropped on the basis of a double jeopardy claim.

“Today’s opinions: Read v. Commonwealth (SJC 13663); Gannett v. Board of Bar Overseers (SJC 13449); Commonwealth v. Maraj (AC 23-P-1142), available after 10 a.m.,” the short tweet from Office of the Reporter of Decisions of the SJC announced this morning.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. A trial last year ended in mistrial and she is scheduled for a second trial on April 1.

Prosecutors say that she struck O’Keefe, a Boston Police officer who she had dated for roughly two years, with her Lexus SUV after a night of heavy drinking and left him to freeze and die on a Canton front yard in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.

Read’s defense attorneys have countered throughout the case that Read has been framed by corrupt and incompetent local and state cops and prosecutors working with the owner of the home whose lawn O’Keefe was found. Defense attorneys say that O’Keefe made it into the home that night and was beaten to death inside.

“The very day after the trial court declared a mistrial, counsel for Ms. Read began receiving unsolicited communications from five of the twelve deliberating jurors … indicating, unequivocally and unconditionally, that the jury had a firm and unwavering 12–0 agreement that Ms. Read is not guilty of two of the three charges against her, including the charge of murder in the second degree,” attorney Martin Weinberg wrote in a 55-page argument to the SJC.

Weinberg had argued the same thing to Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone, who proceeded over Read’s trial earlier this year, using affidavits from Read’s trial attorneys detailing the juror disclosures. Cannone was not moved and a month ago denied the motion to drop the second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident causing death charges in Read’s new trial.