2 days Ago By Patriot Ledger
The United States Supreme Court will not be hearing Karen Read's case . Accused murderer Karen Read asked the nation's highest court to overturn two charges of which her lawyers say jurors in the first trial agreed to acquit her. Read filed the petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.
S. Supreme Court April 3, asking it to take up her case. The Supreme Court agrees to hear about 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year.
The nation's highest court posted Monday, April 28 a list of decisions including a list of "certiorari denied." Read's case is on that list. Read, 45, is accused of killing her boyfriend, Braintree native and Boston police officer John O'Keefe, by backing into him with her SUV outside a Canton home in January 2022 and leaving him to die in a snowstorm following a night of drinking.
Read's first trial in Norfolk Superior Court ended in a mistrial July 1. Jury selection in her retrial started April 1. Monday, April 28, starts the second week of testimony.
More: A cop dead in the snow, a girlfriend on trial. Why Karen Read is a true-crime obsession Read seeks to have two charges tossed Read’s attorneys attempted to get two of the three charges against her dropped after they said jurors had made a unanimous decision to acquit her. Those charges are second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a crash causing injury or death.
Her attorneys argued that jurors agreed she was not guilty on two charges, but weren't told by Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone that they could return a partial verdict. "The jury’s not guilty verdicts were not announced because the trial court, believing but not confirming that the impasse reported in a series of three juror notes applied to all, rather than only some, counts, never inquired regarding the scope of the deadlock and the jurors failed to volunteer to the trial court that their impasse was limited to one of the three counts rather than all," Martin Weinberg, an attorney for Read, wrote in the petition. Read has argued that retrying her on all charges constitutes double jeopardy.
Read's attorneys first made the argument in a motion to dismiss filed with Cannone, who is presiding over her retrial. Cannone denied the motion and Read's team appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court, which upheld Cannone’s decision. A federal judge then declined to intervene, prompting Read's team to appeal to the U.
S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Defense attorney Alan Jackson said the result of the appeal could have an impact on their jury and trial strategy.
The First Circuit of Appeals upheld the judge's decision, allowing the trial to move forward. What happened in Read's first trial Prosecutors called more than 65 witnesses in testimony of the first trial that started April 29, 2024. The defense's list of witnesses was much shorter.
Read did not testify in her own defense. Cannone declared a mistrial in the case in July after jurors returned multiple times stating they could not reach a verdict. Read was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence and leaving the scene of personal injury and death after O'Keefe's body was found outside the Canton home of a fellow Boston police officer.
Defense attorneys for Read say she was framed for O'Keefe's death. (This story was updated to add a photo gallery.) This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Will the US Supreme Court be hearing Karen Read's case?.
