Karen Read is asking Massachusetts’ highest court to dismiss two criminal charges against her in connection with the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, with her lawyers claiming that trying her again amounts to double jeopardy.
Read and her lawyers appeared in Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Boston on Wed., Nov. 6, to appeal Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone’s decision to deny Read’s request to dismiss two of three charges against her, the Associated Press reports.
The appeal comes just months before Read’s retrial, set to begin Jan. 27, after her previous trial ended in July with a deadlocked jury.
A full panel of judges at the Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments from her attorneys and state prosecutors, CBS News reports.
Speaking about double jeopardy, Martin G. Weinberg, an appellate lawyer for Read, said their appeal amounts to a fight for “protections that safeguard defendants, in this case Ms. Read, from re-prosecution for the very same offenses from which a prior jury was discharged without manifest necessity [for a mistrial declaration], without her consent,” the Boston Globe reports.
“The values at stake here are too important,” he said.
Read, 44, a successful equity analyst and former adjunct professor at Bentley University, is accused by prosecutors of backing into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead after a night of drinking on the night of January 29, 2022.
Hours after Read dropped O’Keefe, 46, off at a late-night party at the home of retired Boston police officer Brian Albert, O’Keefe was found severely injured and clinging to life and covered in snow in the Alberts’ front yard.
The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as “blunt impact injuries of the head and hypothermia,” but could not determine whether the manner of death was homicide or accidental.
Read was charged with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision causing death. She pleaded not guilty.
During her nearly three-month trial, her attorneys argued that O’Keefe was attacked by people at the Alberts’ house who had some kind of issue with him. They claim they dragged him out of the house, left him in the yard — and framed her in a massive cover-up.
After deliberating for five days, the jury was unable to come to an agreement. On July 1, Cannone declared a mistrial.
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After the trial, some of the jurors told Read’s lawyers that the jury had voted unanimously behind closed doors to acquit Read on two of the three charges – second-degree murder and leaving the scene, CBS News reports.
One juror told CBS affiliate WBZ-TV that the jury wasn’t sure how to let Judge Cannone know they decided to acquit Read on two of the charges but not the manslaughter charge.
Her lawyers argued in a motion that those two charges should be dropped to avoid double jeopardy.
In August, Cannone wrote that she denied the motion “because the defendant was not acquitted of any charges and defense counsel consented to the Court’s declaration of a mistrial, double jeopardy is not implicated here,” CBS News reports.
