Karen Read’s legal team has submitted a redacted version of its latest motion to dismiss her case “on the basis of extraordinary governmental misconduct” — primarily the alleged withholding of evidence that could prove her innocence.
“Now comes the defendant, Karen Read and respectfully moves this Honorable Court pursuant to Article Twelve of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and Mass. R. Crim. P 14(c), to dismiss all charges with prejudice, on the basis of extraordinary governmental misconduct,” the 36-page motion states at the top.
Lawyers argue that Read “throughout the course of these proceedings … has been severely prejudiced by the Commonwealth’s pervasive misconduct,” including the alleged suppression of exculpatory evidence, including surveillance footage from the Canton Police Department — which was the precipitating factor for this latest motion to dismiss and makes up the bulk of the motion’s arguments.
“As a result of this extraordinary governmental misconduct, Ms. Read has been permanently and irreversibly denied her constitutional right to a fair trial,” the motion continued.
Read, 44, 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 (Count 1), manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence (Count 2) and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death (Count 3).
The motion was filed with the court under seal on Wednesday with a redacted version released today for public consumption.
The motion was first hinted at in a motion filed late January for the state to pay the defense bill for sending out an expert to collect CPD footage that the defense team says it was told existed but did not. Special prosecutor Hank Brennan countered in court that he never made any such promise of its existence but instead expressed spoken doubts to the defense since so much time had passed.
Defense attorneys filed an emergency motion to preserve evidence on Feb. 2, 2022, three days after O’Keefe’s death and the start of the case against Read.
In the motion, they argue that prosecutors have only produced “drips and drabs” of the requested footage and “without any accompanying reports, evidence logs, or other documentation regarding the recovery and chain of custody of this evidence — on at least four separate occasions.”
They further argue that what little was released was at least in part further edited, like the instance of a reversed image shown in court during Read’s first trial last year in which prosecutor Adam Lally “elicited patently false testimony from MSP Sergeant Yuriy Bukhenik that the video was a fair and accurate depiction of critical events — in an attempt to falsely insinuate to the jury that no member of law enforcement ever approached, touched or otherwise disturbed the right rear taillight of Ms. Read’s SUV.”
Prosecutors say that Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus LX570 SUV in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022, following a night of heavy drinking in Canton and yet another fight between the two in their troubled and jealousy-wrought relationship. For evidence of this, they point to the vehicle’s cracked and broken right-rear taillight, which allegedly broke with the force of smashing into O’Keefe. She subsequently, prosecutors say, left him to freeze and die on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton, the home of fellow Boston Police officer Brian Albert.
The defense counters that this is not the case. They contend that O’Keefe made it into that house and was then beaten to death inside by others and then dragged to the front yard. They say that local police and prosecutors worked to keep suspicion away from Albert and his party attendees and to frame Read, including by sprinkling pieces of her taillight on the front yard to be found days after the incident.
The defense motion states that prosecutors knew that critical video was inverted and used it to insinuate that disgraced former MSP Trooper Michael Proctor had instead been around the rear left taillight of the car as it was at the CPD garage as evidence when “Proctor was, in fact, standing directly next to the right rear taillight” and thus capable of meddling with it.”
“To this day, the Commonwealth’s failure to explain the disturbing circumstances surrounding their disclosure of the exculpatory sallyport video, and why some video was suppressed from the defense at the first trial, has made a mockery of Ms. Read’s right to due process,” the motion states.
The defense seeks an evidentiary hearing on its arguments that would require testimony from the first trial prosecutors, assistant district attorneys Adam Lally and Laura McLaughlin, as well as new special prosecutor Hank Brennan, MSP Norfolk County homicide chief detective Brian Tully, Canton Police Chief Helena Rafferty, Trooper Michael Proctor, MSP Sgt. Bukhenik and others.
This is a developing story.