Karen Read’s defense is making even more moves in advance of the Mansfield woman’s second murder trial, including a request to add yet another lawyer to the team and trying to get Canton Police Department surveillance footage.
Read, 44, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years at the time, on Jan. 29, 2022.
She was first tried last summer, but that ended with a hung jury and a mistrial. Her team moved to have the first and last charge dismissed but Judge Beverly Cannone denied that motion and her decision was upheld Tuesday by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
The trial is scheduled for April 1 and on Monday, Cannone set new deadlines in the lead-up. The first was Tuesday, the deadline for all evidentiary motions, which the defense team provided in spades.
The defense is demanding that prosecutors hand over a “forensically sound” copy of video surveillance footage of the Canton PD that is allegedly intact on a retired officer’s computer.
The possible existence of this footage, which defense attorneys have long sought, came to light on Jan. 22, according to the latest defense memo. And the defense team wants everything intact, including all metadata — which are digital logs that accompany files like images and video.
“The metadata underlying the video files at issue is not only central to this case but is exculpatory — and if properly imaged will potentially reveal significant exculpatory, relevant and material information,” the defense memo states, adding that such information that could prove Read’s innocence is her constitutional right.
Cannone in October 2023 ordered that the state produce all video evidence and all associated metadata. Despite this, the defense argues the state has produced video only in small parts, and that the video it has produced has been suspect.
The Read defense team, which is already five members strong, wants to add a sixth member: New York City-based Mark Bederow.
Bederow already knows the ins-and-outs of the case as he has worked on behalf of the legal defense of Holden-based blogger Aidan Kearney, who has extensively covered the case from a pro-Read perspective under his “Turtleboy” brand.
Kearney is so pro-Read, in fact, that he faces charges of witness intimidation in Read’s case.
Read’s first attorney is David Yannetti, who has been present since the beginning. She then brought on Los Angeles-based Alan Jackson and Elizabeth Little. Attorney Martin Weinberg then joined to argue the ill-fated idea of dropping the murder charge. Most recently, NYC-based attorney Robert Alessi joined.