The jury in the retrial of Karen Read, the woman from the Boston suburbs accused of killing her police officer boyfriend in 2022 by intentionally striking him with her car, began deliberations in the high-profile case on Friday after hearing closing arguments from lawyers on both sides.
It is the second time a jury has weighed the fate of Ms. Read, 45, who is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. Her first trial ended in a mistrial last July after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
The case, which has drawn intense national interest, centers on the events of Jan. 29, 2022, when Ms. Read and her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, 46, a Boston police officer, drove to a house party in Canton, Mass., 20 miles south of Boston, after a night out drinking. The prosecution has argued that the couple was fighting, and that Ms. Read intentionally accelerated in reverse after Mr. O’Keefe stepped out of the car at the party, intentionally striking him with her Lexus S.U.V.
After the new trial began in April, defense lawyers spent weeks detailing what they described as the failures and corruption of the police investigation into Officer O’Keefe’s death, asserting that his injuries were not consistent with a car strike. They have argued an alternate theory: that after Ms. Read dropped her boyfriend off at the party, someone inside beat him to death and dumped his body outside in the snow.
On Friday, Alan Jackson, a lawyer for Ms. Read, reminded jurors that investigators never searched the home where the party was held — which was owned by another Boston police officer — “not the next day, not once, not ever.” Mr. Jackson called the inconsistencies in the conduct and findings of investigators “blank spots on a map where justice is supposed to live.”
“Do not endorse an investigation that is broken and corrupt top to bottom,” he said. “Let the community feel through your verdict that justice cannot be bent.”
Hank Brennan, a lawyer for the prosecution, focused his closing argument on the decision he said Ms. Read made that night “with John O’Keefe lying helpless on the front lawn, like a child.”
“She didn’t call 911, she didn’t knock on any door,” he said. “She made a decision in her Lexus — she drove away. She was drunk, she hit him, and she left him to die.”
Throughout the trial, the prosecution played clips of media interviews Ms. Read has done since her first trial, repeatedly suggesting that her own past statements have incriminated her. In one replayed by Mr. Brennan in court on Friday, Ms. Read described worrying that night, after Officer O’Keefe did not come home, that she might have “clipped him” with her car.
Ms. Reed found Officer O’Keefe unresponsive around dawn; she has said that she frantically searched for him after waking up on his couch around 4 a.m. and realizing that he was not there. The officer, who had severe head injuries and hypothermia, was pronounced dead just before 8 that morning. Ms. Read was arrested three days later and pleaded not guilty.
On Friday afternoon, Jurors sent a message to the judge after about two hours of deliberations, asking to be dismissed for the weekend. They will resume on Monday morning. Before deliberations began, six of the 18 jurors were randomly designated as alternates; they will join deliberations only if other jurors are dismissed.
A year ago, jurors in Ms. Read’s first trial in Norfolk Superior Court deliberated for five days — twice signaling the court that they were having trouble — before they told Judge Beverly J. Cannone that they had “fundamental differences in our opinions,” and that “consensus is unattainable.” The judge then declared a mistrial.
Lawyers for both sides relied on much of the same evidence in the second trial. Prosecutors again asserted that a “debris field” of broken taillight shards found on the snowy lawn came from Ms. Read’s car, while defense lawyers again called witnesses who testified that the injuries to Mr. O’Keefe’s arm came from dog bites, not the impact from a car.
Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.
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