WASHINGTON (AP) — Karen Read‘s lawyers have filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in their bid to drop some charges against her and at least 10 jurors have been chosen in her retrial, less than a year after a judge declared a mistrial on charges that she was responsible for the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend.
Karen Read arrives for jury selection for her trial at Norfolk County Superior Court, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Jury selection began Tuesday. Lawyers are seeking to seat 16 jurors, with four serving as alternates.
Read, of Mansfield, is accused of striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in 2022 outside a house party in the town of Canton. Her attorneys have said O’Keefe was actually killed by someone else, possibly another law enforcement agent who was at the party, and that she was framed.
Last year, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.
After the trial, several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of the most serious charge, second-degree murder, and a lesser charge. Despite attempts by Read’s lawyers to get those charges dismissed, she will face the same counts as she did at her first trial. They also failed to have the entire case tossed, arguing governmental misconduct.
The defense’s double jeopardy argument fails
Soon after the mistrial, Read’s lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.
They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.
The defense said that because jurors had agreed Read wasn’t guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state’s highest court, a federal court judge, and an appeals court. Defense attorneys have since appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.
