DEDHAM, Mass. — Karen Read, the woman accused in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, will face all three criminal charges from her first trial when her murder case heads to retrial in April.
This development comes after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss her charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly crash for double jeopardy reasons.
Read’s first murder trial ended in July 2024 when hopelessly deadlocked jurors told Cannone that they couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on a verdict, leading to a mistrial. The 44-year-old Mansfield woman’s lawyers later filed an appeal challenging Cannone’s decision not to dismiss two of three charges against her.
Read’s attorneys had argued that their client’s double jeopardy protections were violated because several jurors who came forward after the mistrial indicated that Read was found not guilty of the two charges in question. They had also argued that polling the jury would show the panel reached “not guilty” verdicts on the two charges and that they were only hung on Read’s manslaughter charge.
Boston 25 legal analyst Peter Elikann said he suspected the SJC would rule against Read, but he said the case is now in a “really unique situation.”
“The unusual situation is going to be that she may have actually been found not guilty on these two counts, in reality, even though technically it wasn’t done properly,” Elikann explained. “This really could be a case of double jeopardy, that was the argument, but the court didn’t find that.”
Elikann said that he also felt the dismissal of the two charges would have helped both the prosecution and defense.
“These two counts were rather weak. There was no real evidence to prove that she absolutely, definitely, intentionally decided to kill him [John O’Keefe],” Elikann explained. “Therefore you get rid of your weak charges and just go with your strong charges. A lot of prosecutors would actually like that.”
Elikann also noted that the defense had been preparing for Read to face all three charges at her retrial, regardless of the SJC ruling.
Read is accused of hitting John O’Keefe, her boyfriend at the time, with her Lexus SUV on Jan. 29, 2022, and leaving him to die after a night of drinking.
The defense has sought to portray Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the Albert family home and then dragged outside and left for dead.
The retrial of Read has been delayed until April 2025.
In an exclusive one-on-one interview on Super Bowl Sunday, Read told Boston 25′s Ted Daniel that she has “nothing to hide” and that she’s “been framed” for murder.
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