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

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did not return accused murderer Karen Read’s trial team the opinion it wanted.

The SJC has ruled that Read 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 police officer, 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 Tuesday 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 O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years at the time, on Jan. 29, 2022.

Prosecutors say she struck O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, 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.

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 on whose lawn O’Keefe was found. Defense attorneys say O’Keefe made it into the home that night and was beaten to death inside.

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.

Read’s 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. Cannone denied their motion to dismiss.

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.”

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