A federal investigation into the handling of John O’Keefe’s death no longer casts a shadow over the local case of accused murderer Karen Read, the prosecution confirmed.
“There is no longer any federal investigation into the investigation of John O’Keefe’s death or any related matter,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan said in Norfolk Superior Court during a Read hearing Tuesday. “It is closed. It is over.”
Brennan’s comments marked the first time there has ever been any clarity on the federal investigation into the case, which came up piecemeal during pre-trial hearings last year and in questioning of witnesses during that trial who had also testified at the federal inquiry. Brennan said he was given explicit permission from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston to disclose that the federal case was closed.
Read, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of striking Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, with her car and leaving him to freeze and die on a Canton front lawn on Jan. 29, 2022. For that she was indicted on three charges: second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death.
She was tried on those charges last year but the case ended in mistrial because of a hung jury. Since then, the Read defense team has launched efforts to dismiss two of the charges — including the murder charge — after, they say, that five jurors had told them post-trial that they were ready to acquit on those charges and were only hung on Charge 2, the OUI manslaughter charge.
They first asked Cannone to poll the jurors and then drop those charges, which she denied. Then they took the argument to the state Supreme Judicial Court, which upheld Cannone’s decision. They finally took their efforts to federal court.
Tuesday’s hearing was the start to a week that will be chock-full of Karen Read hearings, both at the Superior Court in Dedham and at the federal court in Boston. Wednesday has a federal hearing at 9:30 a.m. and the parties will reconvene in Dedham at 11 a.m., or sooner if they get out of federal court earlier than expected, for the defense to argue their latest motion to dismiss “on the basis of extraordinary governmental misconduct.”
On Tuesday, the parties also discussed various motions already argued and pending.
First up was the previous matter of the defense’s alleged ethical misconduct involving two expert witnesses, which involved a payment. Judge Cannone complained that defense attorney Robert Alessi waited until the middle of his presentation to talk about this payment, but Alessi countered Tuesday that he was making his presentation of defense interactions with the two witnesses from ARCCA — which testified that O’Keefe could not have died from a vehicle strike — in chronological order for the most clarity.
Then came challenges to witnesses.
Alessi argued that prosecution witness Dr. James Crosby, a retired sheriff’s lieutenant and a canine behavior consultant, should be barred from testifying for two broad reasons: one, that according to state legal practice and Judge Cannone’s own rules in the case, a non-medical doctor is barred from testifying on wound analysis and, two, that his qualifications and methodology are suspect in general.
“He provides zero — and I mean zero — words to tether his methodology to a common practice,” Alessi argued over Crosby’s assertion that wounds to O’Keefe’s arm were from a sharp object and not a dog bite.
The defense has secured a place for their own expert, Dr. Marie Russell, to testify that they are indeed dog bites. She testified at the end of the last trial, as well.
Brennan countered that unlike Russell before this case, Crosby has previously testified in courts on dog bites.
Alessi also wants to bar meteorologist Robert Gilman from testifying that the ground was “hard as a rock” in Canton the morning O’Keefe died, as ground hardness is not the expertise of meteorologists.
Finally, Brennan wants the defense sanctioned for sharing information on disgraced State Police Trooper Michael Proctor in public filings, thus disobeying a protective order from the court.