Karen Read’s defense team is expected to push to have her murder charges dropped later today as they meet for a motion hearing in her continuing charges for the murder of boyfriend John O’Keefe.
Read is accused of hitting Boston police officer boyfriend O’Keefe with her car in 2022 after dropping him off at a friend’s house for an after party after a night out. Police accused her of backing into O’Keefe then not stopping after knowingly hitting him.
The defense claims that O’Keefe was murdered upon entering the house by homeowner Brian Albert, DEA agent Brian Higgins and nephew Colin Albert then placed on the front lawn of Brian Albert’s home. A conspiracy was then hatched to blame Read for the murder as she was “an outsider” to the supposedly “all powerful” Albert and McCabe families.
Last month her initial trial for second degree murder was hung as the jury returned that they could not move forward to come to a verdict. After prosecutors announced that they would retry Read for the murder charges, the defense claimed that they began to hear from jury members who claimed that the jury had decided to acquit Read of second-degree murder but did not put the verdict forward.
The prosecution recently confirmed that they had received an unsolicited communication from one of the jurors, making the same claims, however, they did not follow up on it as asking about the jury’s deliberations would be unethical.
Read’s defense has put forward a motion to drop all charges against the defendant as they claim that Read was effectively “found innocent” based on the vote of the jury. According to the defense, the retrial would be “double jeopardy” as in their opinion, Read was already found innocent of the charges despite no verdict being rendered.
Prosecutors countered that there was no verdict rendered and that the jury had multiple chances to continue their deliberations to reach a verdict. Every jury member agreed that they could not move forward, and that no verdict would be rendered in the case. None of the jury members have provided affidavits and a simple jury vote is not a verdict.
The latest pre-trial hearing in the retrial of Karen Read is set for later today.
ReallyCoolNews will be providing live coverage of today’s hearing on our YouTube channel.
