DEDHAM, Mass. — (AP) — The jury returned Monday for its first full day of deliberations in the second murder trial of Karen Read, who is charged with killing her Boston police officer boyfriend in a case that has generated more than three years of heated debate.
Jurors began deliberations late last week, more than a month after the trial started.
Read, 45, is accused of striking John O'Keefe with her car outside a suburban Boston house party and leaving him to die in the snow in January 2022. She has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene.
Read's lawyers say O’Keefe, 46, was beaten, bitten by a dog, then left outside a home in Canton in a conspiracy orchestrated by the police that included planting evidence against Read.
Read's second trial followed similar contours to the first, which ended in a mistrial last year.
Read has never been jailed for O'Keefe's killing. She did not testify at her first murder trial or this one.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson began his closing argument Friday by repeating three times: “There was no collision.” He told the jury that Read is an innocent woman victimized by a police cover up in which law enforcement officers sought to protect their own and obscure the real killer.
He also reminded the jury Read is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and a moral certainty.
Jackson suggested Brian Higgins, a federal agent, was agitated at a bar after Read didn’t respond to his text, and coaxed O’Keefe over to the Canton house party. Higgins had exchanged romantic text messages with Read and sent her a text message that said “um well” after seeing her with O'Keefe. He also gestured at O'Keefe while looking agitated, Jackson said.
“What happened inside that house, that basement or that garage? What evidence was there for investigators to look into? What did they ignore?” Jackson asked, noting the “obvious dog bites” on O’Keefe’s arm and the head injury from his falling backward onto a hard surface.
Jackson described the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as botched and biased from the very beginning.
He attacked the lead investigator in the case, Michael Proctor, reading aloud some of his offensive and sexist texts and explaining how he was fired for his “blatant bias” in the investigation. He also noted that the state never called Proctor as a witness in this trial, as they did during the first trial.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan opened his closing argument Friday by saying Read callously decided to leave O’Keefe dying in the snow, fully aware that he was gravely injured. He described that decision as “a choice” to let O’Keefe die.
He also said Read was well beyond the legal alcohol limit when she drove at the time.
“She was drunk, she hit him, and she left him to die,” Brennan said.
Describing O’Keefe as a “good man” who “helped people,” Brennan said O’Keefe needed help that night and the only person who could lend a hand – call 911 or knock on a door – was Read. Instead, she drove away in her SUV.
Brennan said the defense's characterization of Higgins' behavior at the bar earlier in the night as inaccurate. He said Higgins was “playfighting” and not displaying true hostility.
Brennan also characterized O’Keefe and Read’s relationship as failing at the time of O’Keefe’s death, and said there was growing animosity between them. He played angry voicemails she sent to O’Keefe that night after she arrived home.
Brennan said the data on Read’s Lexus proved she reversed her car to where O’Keefe was standing and that health data on his phone showed he had gotten out of her car right before the alleged collision.
Read, he said, “decided” to put the car into reverse and “decided” to accelerate toward him after the two had an argument on the way to the house where the party took place.
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Whittle reported from Scarborough, Maine.
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