DEDHAM, Mass. — High-profile defense attorney Alan Jackson opened up about all things Karen Read in a new interview with Vanity Fair after a Norfolk Superior Court jury last month found his client not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of John O’Keefe.
The verdict came nearly a year after a separate jury deadlocked over Read’s involvement in the January 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, which resulted in Judge Beverly Cannone declaring a mistrial.
The verdict was a huge victory for Jackson and the entire Read legal team, who have long asserted that she was framed by police after dropping O’Keefe off at a party at the Canton home of a fellow officer. Prosecutors argued Read hit O’Keefe with her SUV before driving away, but the defense maintained O’Keefe was killed inside the home and later dragged outside.
As he walked into the Dedham courthouse to learn Read’s verdict on the afternoon of June 18, 2025, Jackson told Vanity Fair that he was “supremely confident” she would be cleared of the most severe charges against her.
“Based on the evidence and the presentation and the defense we put together…it was not going to be guilty. It just couldn’t be,” Jackson said in the interview.
While Read was convicted of drunken driving and sentenced to probation, Jackson’s prediction held true. Jackson revealed to Vanity Fair that Read was prepared for the possibility of Cannone giving her a year in jail for the OUI charge, noting that he and his team “were going to immediately appeal it.”
In an October 2024 interview, Read told Vanity Fair that she was living off the remains of her 401 (k) and owed more than $5 million in deferred fees. A few months later, in an exclusive television interview with Boston 25’s Ted Daniel, Read said she was “paying for everything entirely on the charity of supporters.”
In the new interview, Jackson stopped short of calculating the final sum of his client’s legal expenses, but said his law firm would have billed Read $10 million for both trials.
In the February interview, Jackson told Daniel that the defense team wasn’t taking payments from Read. Before the start of the murder retrial, Read sold her Mansfield home for $810,000.
Read and Jackson are now reportedly teaming up to develop a scripted project based on her case.
Jackson touched on an array of other topics while speaking with Vanity Fair, including why he believes special prosecutor Hank Brennan opted not to call disgraced lead investigator Michael Proctor to the stand in Read’s second trial.
“You were so embarrassed of Michael Proctor you couldn’t even put him on the stand,” Jackson told the magazine.
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