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Karen Read case: Defense expert allowed to testify on ‘hos long’ search
Lawyers for Karen Read said they expect to file a “full-throated” motion to dismiss the case against her in the coming weeks.
Karen Read’s digital expert will be allowed to testify that witness Jennifer McCabe Googled “hos long to die in cold” hours before Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, was found unresponsive in the snow, Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Thursday.
Cannone denied prosecutors’ request to block certain testimony from Richard Green, who maintains McCabe made the disputed search at 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022. Prosecutors argued Green’s claims “lack any evidentiary support,” noting two other experts found data to back up McCabe’s explanation that she made the search hours later and at Read’s insistence after the women found O’Keefe’s body.
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“To me, it’s rather a difference of opinions that needs to be resolved by the jury,” Cannone said of the competing timestamps.
Read, 44, is accused of deliberately backing her SUV into O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, while dropping him off at a house party in Canton after a night of bar-hopping. Her attorneys have pinned the blame on other afterparty guests, suggesting Read was a “convenient outsider” framed in a widespread law enforcement coverup.
Her first trial ended with a hung jury last July, and she’s due to stand trial again in April.
Read’s lawyers say prosecutors sent them on a ‘wild goose chase’
With less than two months to go before the start of her highly anticipated retrial, Read and her team returned to court Thursday to address several outstanding motions. Her lawyers are looking to have the state reimburse them for an expert who traveled to the Canton Police Department to analyze surveillance footage from the day O’Keefe died, only to learn authorities hadn’t preserved the original recordings.
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Defense attorney Alan Jackson accused prosecutors of sending the defense on a “wild goose chase” in search of footage the camera system had overwritten within 30 days of O’Keefe’s death. He further criticized authorities for failing to turn over a complete copy of the Canton Police Department footage, accusing them of withholding exculpatory evidence.
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“What we have gotten, it appears, are scraps and fragments of videos that the commonwealth has decided … within their own timeframe, to dole out to us over the course of months and years,” Jackson told the court.
He said those piecemeal videos include footage missing a 42-minute segment from around the time Read’s SUV pulled into the station’s sallyport garage. In another notable incident, jurors in Read’s first trial were shown video of her SUV in the sallyport that was inexplicably mirrored, or flipped.
“This entire situation surrounding this [digital video recorder] and the commonwealth’s maintenance of that DVR and the footage on it is a complete dumpster fire, and Ms. Read has to pay for the fire extinguisher,” Jackson argued. “And that’s not fair.”
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But special prosecutor Hank Brennan asserted there was no motion to preserve the footage. He said the defense wasn’t entitled to send an expert to the station to download video, but prosecutors tried to accommodate the request anyway “in the spirit of transparency.”
“Nobody was misled in this case,” Brennan added. “They have taken a professional courtesy and an effort to help and they have distorted it into some type of injustice.”
Prosecutors also countered that Read’s lawyers were aware the original files might no longer be available on the camera system, given O’Keefe’s death occurred nearly three years prior. In fact, Brennan said he and Jackson discussed the possibility in early December.
“Attorney Jackson expressed concern — understandably, being a defense attorney — that almost three years later, the video may not be on the [camera system],” he said. “I had the same concern.”
Brennan also said he offered to turn over or grant access to footage that had been routinely copied from the camera system onto a hard drive. Cannone directed Read’s lawyers to confer with prosecutors about accessing that footage and took their motion for reimbursement under advisement.
Defense to file ‘full-throated’ motion to dismiss
Read’s lawyers also said they intend to comply with prosecutors’ request for reciprocal discovery on two crash reconstructionists who were hired by the Department of Justice and FBI to look into O’Keefe’s death and subsequently testified for the defense in Read’s first trial. Prosecutors had questioned whether the defense would be able to meet their discovery obligations for ARCCA Inc.’s Daniel Wolfe and Andrew Rentschler, given the “history and complexity” of ARCCA’s involvement in the case.
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While letters between the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office and federal authorities confirmed the U.S. Attorney’s Office launched an investigation into Read’s case, details about the scope and purpose of the federal probe remain largely under wraps.
Separately, prosecutors sought clarification regarding their access to raw data from Read’s phone, specifically regarding navigation and Google searches. Brennan argued prosecutors have the legal authority to search the phone’s contents under a 2022 search warrant, and Cannone agreed the data was “squarely within the search warrant.”
Jackson also said the defense intends to file a “full-throated” motion to dismiss the case, and Cannone gave them until Feb. 21 to do so. A hearing on the motion will be held March 4.
Livestream via Boston 25 News.
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