The judge in the Karen Read murder case says she’ll decide without a hearing whether the defense will maintain its digital forensics expert who has testified the controversial “hos long to die in cold” search happened hours before John O’Keefe’s dying body was found in the snow.
Judge Beverly Cannone made the ruling after a motion-packed hearing Friday at Norfolk Superior Court, laying out the schedule ahead of Read’s second trial set to begin April 1, if the case makes it that far.
Read’s defense team has said it’s likely it will file a motion to dismiss the case, with a hearing on that anticipated action scheduled for Feb. 18.
Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan on Friday requested a hearing to determine whether the defense would be allowed to have computer forensics expert Richard Green testify again in the retrial, accusing the computer forensics technician of “baseless” claims that “lack any evidentiary support.”
Green testified in the first trial last June that key witness Jennifer McCabe made the suspicious Google search “hos long to die in the cold” hours before O’Keefe’s body was found, which the defense says points toward conspiracy.
Green’s testimony that McCabe’s search at 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, differs from that of the state’s experts, Jessica Hyde and Ian Whiffin, who have said the search was made at 6:24 a.m.
McCabe testified that she made the search at that time, saying she did so at the behest of Read as the women were near O’Keefe’s body in the snow, on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road, in Canton.
“I did not delete that search,” McCabe said last May. “I did not make that search at 2:27 a.m. I would not have left John O’Keefe outside to die in the cold because he is my friend, who I love.”
Brennan accused Green of being a “vessel for the defense,” pointing to how first responders testified last spring that Read was asking them questions about hypothermia around the time McCabe said she made the search.
Brennan also slammed Green’s affidavit which the prosecutor said was filled with “advocacy, insinuations, chemise, conjecture and claims that have no factual basis.
“In ways, it’s a very dangerous affidavit to simply make an assault of comments that a user did something,” the prosecutor said, “purposely deleted her important phrase ‘how long to die in the cold’ without any forensic data evaluation or validation.”
Read, 44, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her first trial ended with a hung jury last July.
Prosecutors say Read struck O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer, and her boyfriend of two years, with her SUV following a drunken argument and left him to die in a snowstorm during that late January morning, in Canton.
O’Keefe died at the age of 46.
Read’s defense team counters that outside actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and local police to frame Read for his murder, pointing to McCabe’s search as key evidence.
Defense attorney Robert Alessi shot back at Brennan’s claims, arguing Green is more than qualified to testify again and used proper methodology. He pointed out another key finding that Green has made on the search.
“There were 4,056 searches on the phone of Ms. McCabe,” Alessi said. “There was one deletion out of 4,056. Guess which one it was? ‘Hos long to die in the cold.’ There are no odds that that can happen randomly.”
The defense attorney then pointed to how Green suggested that could mean there was either a user-interaction deletion or “post-imaging manipulation of the data.”
“He doesn’t accuse individuals,” Alessi said of Green. “That’s the job of a digital forensic person, to point that out and say that that raises concerns. The fact that there’s only one deletion of a search out of 4,056, I think it’s malpractice if a digital forensic examiner doesn’t point that out.”