The case that captured the attention of people across the country has finally concluded: Karen Read was acquitted of the 2022 death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
To a screaming crowd of hundreds outside the Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Read thanked her legal team and supporters.
Her second murder trial was a victory for Read after the first ended in a hung jury last year. This time, though, jurors found Read guilty of drunk driving — but not guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. She was sentenced to one year of probation.
CNN correspondent Jean Casarez has been closely following the trial.
Here she breaks down some of the key pieces of the retrial and what could have changed for Read this time around.
Some of the answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was the biggest difference between the first trial and this one? What witnesses and pieces of evidence stand out to you as being most consequential?
A: There were many differences between the first trial and this trial. First of all, let’s look at the side of the prosecution: They brought in Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan, who was a noted trial attorney, but normally, he is a defense attorney. He was stellar in his presentation in that courtroom. He examined and cross-examined almost every single witness, and he did it with precision and knowledge, and finesse. So that was the number one difference; the prosecution went to a much higher level.
The second thing was, between the first trial and the second trial, Karen Read had done numerous television interviews and even one that was just audio. Brennan was allowed to bring in these interview clips of Read herself saying things against her interest, and there were many of them.
On the defense side, their theory in the first trial was that Karen Read was framed. Now, that was still in this second trial, but what became paramount was reasonable doubt, and the defense hammered home every chance they got: reasonable doubt.
One of their greatest strengths was the arm injuries on John O’Keefe – where did they come from? The prosecution couldn’t show that beyond a reasonable doubt because you don’t know exactly how John O’Keefe was standing. There were taillight fragments in his clothing that were found by the forensics experts, but you couldn’t show how those injuries got on that arm, and I think that helped the defense. Every opportunity they had to show reasonable doubt in this circumstantial case, they did so.
Q: There were notably some witnesses who did not take the stand this time around, including lead investigator Michael Proctor. Brian Albert, a Boston police officer who owned the home Read said she dropped O’Keefe off at, and Brian Higgins, an ATF agent who was there the night O’Keefe died, also did not testify. However, the jury still heard about them and even saw text messages from them. Why did neither side put them on the stand?
A: In the first trial, Proctor, Albert, and Higgins, a romantic interest of Karen Read, all took the stand for the prosecution. But in this trial, a strategic decision was made by the Commonwealth not to put them on the stand at all. They didn’t feel they needed them, so they didn’t put them on.
That left the defense to call them, and the defense did not want to do direct examinations on these individuals. So the evidence came in other ways. Sexist texts from Proctor did come into this trial through a childhood friend who was on the group chat where Proctor sent the messages about Read right at the beginning of this case. That strategy of not calling them to testify may have worked in the eyes of some jurors, but it didn’t help the prosecution in the end.
Q: Legal experts were concerned that Read’s public comments and interviews would hurt her case. How do you think the jurors weighed that?
A: We know that jurors had a question once they started their deliberation: “Are these clips evidence?” So at that point, they may not have even considered them. The judge told them, “Yes, they are evidence.”
Then they deliberated all day Wednesday. Did they look at those clips? How much did they consider those clips? Or was their mind already made up even by the time they sent that question about whether they were evidence? We don’t know at this point how much emphasis they placed on the defendant herself speaking, ultimately to that jury, through those interviews.
Q: Like Proctor and other key players in this case, Read also didn’t testify during the retrial, even though the jury was hearing her public comments. Can you explain the thinking behind that decision for the defense?
A: I think the defense thought it was way too risky to put her on the stand. Not only would she be subject to intense cross-examination by Hank Brennan that may not prove to be helpful to the defense’s case, but they would also risk saying things that aren’t helpful, as she did in the interviews.
She even said in one of the interviews that this was her testimony. She wanted to talk. They were probably concerned about what she might say, and they decided their case was strong enough – they didn’t have to prove anything, they were showing reasonable doubt, and they didn’t have to put her on the stand to rebut those interview clips.
Q: Read has famously and publicly claimed to be the target of a cover-up. But her defense attorneys did not argue a third-party culprit theory in court. Why wouldn’t they go there?
A: They wanted to. They desperately wanted to. They filed a motion saying they wanted that instruction of the third-party culprit to go to the jury, and before the trial began, but Judge Beverly Cannone said she needed to see if they could develop this theory during the trial to be able to get that instruction. Well, with Michael Proctor, Brian Albert, and Brian Higgins not taking the stand, the defense could not develop that. They did not get that instruction. So conceivably, it could have hurt the defense, but they didn’t need it in the end.
Q: The commonwealth did have some strong evidence against Karen Read. What was it, and why wasn’t that enough?
A: John O’Keefe’s body was found in the snow, near the flagpole and close to the street. On the day that all of this happened, late in the afternoon, the Massachusetts CERT team — which was their emergency team — came out. The blizzard had ended, but the mounds of snow were very high. They stood in a grid line with sifters and sifted through the snow close to where his body was found, and they started finding broken pieces of taillight, O’Keefe’s shoe, and a broken cocktail glass O’Keefe took out of Read’s car when he got out.
At the time, law enforcement had just gotten custody of that car, and the prosecution tried to make the point that, based on the timeline, there’s no way they could have planted all that evidence where John O’Keefe’s body was.
The second piece of evidence was O’Keefe’s cell phone. An expert testified about the Apple Health steps that O’Keefe took. That expert went behind the data that you and I see on our phone and determined, after O’Keefe got out of Karen Read’s car — because the steps began again at that point on his phone — and then they ended just a few minutes later. His phone never moved again until the next morning when O’Keefe’s body was found. The defense’s theory is that O’Keefe walked into the house, was killed inside that house, and his body was brought back outside. Well, that phone would have had to move again. It never moved after he got out of Karen Read’s car.
But the jury had to assess that, and even if they felt that was strong evidence, they had to believe that the reasonable doubt was greater than what appeared to be conclusive evidence of guilt.
Q: Read’s supporters have always brought a lot of public attention to this case. When she walked out of the courthouse on Wednesday after the verdict was read, hundreds of people taking over the street cheered and celebrated. Who are her supporters, and why have they rallied around her all this time?
A: Her supporters were very real people from this community, even some from outside this community. I got to know some of them. They’re very nice people, and they were very respectful to the court. This was a grassroots movement that began with very small numbers, and it just started to grow.
This grassroots movement was based on the belief that Karen Read was framed, but also focused on what they believed was corrupt law enforcement that did not follow the law, that manufactured evidence, or tampered with evidence. They believed it was rampant in their community. And not only law enforcement, government at all local levels. Karen Read, I believe, became their symbol for that corruption that they felt was tainting their community.
Q: Before coming to a final decision on Wednesday, the jury had a false alarm. The jurors indicated they had a verdict, only to change their minds. But the judge directed the court officer to place the verdict slip into a sealed envelope. Do you think the first sealed slip said the same thing as the final verdict? Will we ever know?
A: We don’t know why there was this false call at the beginning, and then minutes later, there was a verdict. We may find out in time, but if the judge had believed there was a concern, an issue of integrity, I believe there would have been more to the finality of this trial than there was. There was a verdict, the judge accepted it, the jury determined it was a true and honest verdict, and that it was unanimous.
Q: What happens now?
A: There’s a big question whether the victim in this case, the person who lost his life, John O’Keefe, and his family ever get justice? Is there someone else who committed this crime? Will there be an investigation? Will there be a prosecution? I guess time will tell.
I can tell you that it didn’t come in the trial, but there was an investigation of law enforcement involved with this case, and Brennan said in court that the investigation ended without any criminal charges.
So we have to only hope there will be answers because if there are no answers for the O’Keefe family, for this community, and for everyone else in this country who cares, what happened to John O’Keefe will remain a mystery. And no one wants his death to go unanswered.
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