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Karen Read’s lawyers went before the state’s highest court Wednesday. Here’s what they said.
“The values at stake here are too important,” Martin Weinberg, one of Read’s defense attorneys, told the Supreme Judicial Court.
Karen Read’s lawyers made their pitch to the state’s highest court Wednesday, arguing that two of Read’s charges should be dropped after jurors in her first trial allegedly agreed unanimously — but unofficially — to acquit her of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident in John O’Keefe’s 2022 death.
The Supreme Judicial Court also heard from prosecutors with the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, who argued that the lack of a public verdict meant Read was not acquitted on any charge.
The SJC is now weighing Read’s appeal, though it may be weeks or months before the court issues a ruling.
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Read, 44, is accused of drunkenly and intentionally backing her SUV into O’Keefe, her boyfriend, and leaving him to die on a snowy lawn in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022. Read’s lawyers maintain she was framed in a widespread law enforcement coverup.
She’s slated to stand trial again next year following a mistrial last July.
‘The values at stake here are too important,’ Read’s lawyer argues
Appellate courts veteran Martin Weinberg argued on behalf of Read’s camp Wednesday, citing several jurors’ “uncontradicted” claims that the jury actually agreed to acquit Read on two of her three charges prior to Judge Beverly Cannone’s mistrial declaration. He pushed for a post-trial hearing to confirm those reports.
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“You can ask for a result without probing into a mental process, into the content of deliberation,” Weinberg contended. “The values at stake here are too important.”
He further asserted that Read’s trial attorneys did not consent to a mistrial, nor did Cannone have any legal need to declare one. In fact, he argued, the defense attorneys had no opportunity to weigh in before Cannone called the jury back into the courtroom and declared a mistrial.
“I stand before you with 52 years of trial experience to say, no competent defense lawyer would risk the wrath of the judge or jury by interrupting that process, by making objections,” Weinberg said.
Cannone called for a mistrial July 1, shortly after jurors sent her a final note reporting a deadlock. However, it wasn’t long before several jurors approached lawyers on both sides and purportedly said they were only split on the charge of manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, which carried lesser included offenses of involuntary manslaughter and motor vehicle homicide.
According to Weinberg, Cannone had a few “viable” options after receiving the jury’s final note, including clarifying whether the deadlock applied to all charges or asking if the jury had a partial verdict to share.
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But prosecutor Caleb Schillinger raised concerns that probing questions could risk coercing jurors into reaching a verdict.
“You have a jury that has sat through a grueling 10-week trial, nearly 100 witnesses, hundreds of exhibits, now four or five days of deliberations,” he said. “They’ve returned three times indicating that they are deadlocked, they are at an impasse, and they do not want to continue to deliberate.”
Justice Serge Georges then asked Schillinger about the manifest necessity of Cannone’s mistrial declaration, “because all of those things seem to be the reasons why you would tell counsel about the last note and say, ‘What do you think?’ Because you have gone through this 10-week trial. You have gone through the impanelment process. You’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and money, anxiety and angst in this trial. Why wouldn’t we talk about what potentially we could do short of saying, ‘Mistrial; let’s start again’?”
Schillinger replied: “In hindsight, seeing the quote-unquote ‘remarkable turnaround’ of the defendant’s position, would it have been better, would it have been preferable for the judge to take that extra step? Perhaps, and another judge might have done that.”
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But given the context of the jury’s final note — and the defense team’s response to each prior message — Cannone could reasonably conclude the jury was at an impasse and there was a need for a mistrial, he argued. Schillinger also emphasized that Read’s lawyers repeatedly requested a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, the so-called “dynamite” charge that serves as a last-ditch attempt to break jury deadlocks.
What comes next?
Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd questioned what Read’s appeal could mean for future cases.
“It sounds like if ever a juror comes back to the defendant and says, ‘Hey, you know, that’s not really what happened,’ then we open it up,” she said.
Weinberg maintained the appeal is “not going to open the floodgates” for post-trial inquiries.
Read sat quietly off to the side with her family and left the courthouse promptly following Wednesday’s hearing, a sharp contrast to the Norfolk Superior Court court appearances where she and lead defense attorneys David Yannetti and Alan Jackson often seemed to embrace the spotlight. Some of O’Keefe’s friends and family members also attended the hearing, arriving at the courthouse together in a large pack.
Read’s second trial is currently scheduled to begin Jan. 27, though both sides are seeking to postpone it until April.
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
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