Lawyers for Karen Read say they plan to seek sanctions, dismissal

Lawyers for Karen Read said they plan to seek sanctions in the Mansfield woman’s controversial murder case as her March 12 trial date looms ever closer. 

Defense attorney David Yannetti did not offer specifics on the proposed sanctions or their justification, only noting during a hearing Friday that Read’s lawyers plan to file a motion by the end of the day.

He also indicated that the defense will file a motion to dismiss — a common tactic in criminal and civil cases — and a motion to disqualify the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office from Read’s case. Boston.com has reached out to Yannetti seeking further information. 

Read, 43, is accused of backing her SUV into her boyfriend — Boston police officer John O’Keefe — while dropping him off in Canton following a night out with friends in January 2022. Prosecutors say Read left O’Keefe to die in the snow outside a fellow Boston police officer’s home, but Read’s lawyers have alleged a coverup and claim other afterparty guests are to blame.

Relationship between lead investigator and witnesses called into question

Much of Friday’s hearing was spent analyzing the relationship between Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, a lead investigator on the case, and Jennifer McCabe, a witness. McCabe was at a bar with Read and O’Keefe on Jan. 28, 2022; her brother-in-law, Brian Albert, also owned the home where O’Keefe’s body was found outside the following morning. 

One of the most contested pieces of evidence in the case is a Google search McCabe allegedly made for “ho[w] long to die in cold.” Read’s lawyers claim McCabe made the search at 2:27 a.m., hours before O’Keefe’s body was found. Prosecutors, however, say that timestamp is derived from misinterpreted phone data. 

On Friday, the defense team asked Judge Beverly Cannone to grant them access to records of calls and messages between McCabe, Proctor, and Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth. The lawyers are also seeking communication between Michael Proctor and Brian Albert, or Albert’s wife. 

“We’ve established that there is a close personal relationship between and among Michael Proctor and obviously Elizabeth Proctor, and these third-party culprits that have been implicated in this case that we’ve brought to the court’s attention, the Alberts and the McCabes,” defense attorney Alan Jackson argued in court. 

He asserted that Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey “put trooper Proctor’s neutrality at issue” when he released a video message in August denying that Proctor had close personal ties with anyone involved in the investigation. 

“Every suggestion to the contrary is a lie,” Morrissey said at the time. 

Jackson said the defense team has found several photos purportedly showing Proctor’s family socializing with relatives of the McCabes and Alberts, citing one photo of Proctor and Brian Albert’s nephew, Colin, in a wedding party together in 2012. 

“That’s not a lie; it’s a photograph,” Jackson said. 

Another point of contention was a social visit McCabe paid to the Proctors’ home in September. Jackson described the visit as “suspicious,” but Kevin Reddington, a lawyer for McCabe, said she was meeting with Elizabeth Proctor to commiserate about the negative attention they both have received for their ties to the case. 

“We all know that the Sept. 25 meeting was about harassment and what these two women had been going through in the news media with the extreme harassment that they were suffering as a result of [them] being witnesses on a case and cooperating with the government’s prosecution of Ms. Read,” Reddington said. 

Andrew Kettlewell, an attorney for Elizabeth Proctor, further asserted that Michael Proctor wasn’t even home at the time. Kettlewell described the relationship between the two families as a “distant connection” and explained that “Mr. Proctor’s sister has a friend whose sister is married into the Albert family.”

He added: “The fact that Colin Albert and Michael Proctor were in the same wedding party I think is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Colin Albert was about 10 years old at the time and served as a ring bearer, because he was a child.”

Read’s lawyers want to unseal letters between DA and feds

Cannone also heard a motion from prosecutors concerning DNA testing for Proctor and another State Police investigator on the case. Assistant District Attorney Adam C. Lally explained that there were three possible sources of DNA found on Read’s SUV tail light, one belonging to O’Keefe and two others of unknown origin. 

“There has been rampant sort of speculation, accusations levied against these particular troopers in regard to contaminating evidence or planting evidence and things of that nature,” Lally said, adding that prosecutors are hoping to rule out the troopers’ DNA. 

The judge also delayed a highly anticipated defense motion to unseal communication between the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office and federal authorities. 

According to the defense, prosecutors turned over six letters between Morrissey’s office and federal authorities as part of discovery, the evidence prosecutors provide to a defendant before trial. Prosecutors have filed a motion to seal those letters, but Read’s lawyers want them made publicly available. 

In a motion filed in Norfolk Superior Court Tuesday, the lawyers said the letters include communication between the DA’s office, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. 

Notably, the disclosure of the letters last month coincided with reports that federal prosecutors are conducting an inquiry into Read’s arrest and prosecution. 

In their motion, Read’s lawyers accused prosecutors of trying to disseminate only the portions of the letters that reflect favorably on the DA’s office. 

“Since the Letters are in the public interest, and since the Commonwealth has not met its burden in establishing that an exemption applies, the Letters — like every other non-impounded document in this case — should be available for public review and scrutiny,” the lawyers argued. 

Speaking in court Friday, Yannetti said the letters will be part of the defense team’s evidence in their request for sanctions.

Responding to reports of a federal probe in the Read case, Morrissey previously issued a statement emphasizing his confidence in the state’s prosecution.

“The US Attorney’s Office does not have jurisdiction over a state murder case, so this is an extraordinary step on their part,” Morrissey said last month. “I am unconcerned because I have confidence in what we’ve done and what people have told us.”

Cannone did not take up the motion Friday, explaining that the defense team needs to serve the U.S. Attorney’s Office and give them a chance to have their say in court. For similar reasons, she also delayed a motion from prosecutors seeking interview notes and recordings of any statements Read gave to Boston magazine for a September article. She set another hearing for Jan. 18 to give Boston and federal prosecutors a chance to weigh in.

Watch Friday’s hearing in full:

Abby Patkin

Staff Writer

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.

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