Karen Learn’s civil criticism in opposition to defendants who she argues killed John O’Keefe after which conspired to border her for his homicide has been transferred to federal court docket, with the decide who sentenced Whitey Bulger assigned to the case.
Based on information, Learn’s civil criticism has been faraway from Bristol Superior Court docket and transferred to the U.S. District Court docket in Boston, following a request from the lawyer for the Alberts, McCabes and Brian Higgins.
Legal professional Jim Tuxbury, representing the so-called “house defendants,” filed the request in Bristol Superior on Tuesday, per week after Learn and her protection group sued witnesses they level to as “third parties” for O’Keefe’s demise and members of the Massachusetts State Police concerned within the homicide investigation.
The docket in Bristol Superior exhibits that the case was shortly transferred to federal court docket, with U.S. District Court docket Chief Decide Denise J. Casper assigned to supervise it, in line with a file filed on Wednesday.
Casper is thought for sentencing infamous Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger in November 2013 to 2 consecutive life phrases plus 5 years and $19.5 million in restitution. Through the sentencing, Casper informed Bulger, “The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes, is almost unfathomable.”
Casper sentenced Bulger after a jury convicted the mobster of working a felony enterprise accountable for the homicide of 11 folks. Bulger was crushed to demise on Oct. 30, 2018, after being transferred to a jail in West Virginia.
This isn’t the primary time there was a connection between the Learn and Bulger circumstances.
Hank Brennan, a longtime protection lawyer well-known for representing Bulger, earned $566,000 for his work as particular prosecutor in Learn’s second homicide trial, which ended with a jury acquitting the lady of O’Keefe’s demise.
Tuxbury, representing Brian and Nicole Albert, Jennifer and Matthew McCabe and Brian Higgins requested that Learn’s civil criticism in opposition to them be transferred to federal court docket, which the lawyer stated is the “proper” venue for the case.
Tuxbury primarily based his movement, specifically, on Learn’s allegation that the defendants “violated her federal civil rights by purportedly acting in concert to deprive her of her Fourth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution.”
“By way of background,” Tuxbury wrote, “the Superior Court Action arises from Plaintiff’s ongoing and malicious attempt to evade responsibility for the death of John O’Keefe by smearing and defaming witnesses who participated in the prosecution of her. The case is a vengeful abuse of the judicial process, and Removing Defendants will make arguments in that regard at the appropriate time.”
Learn’s protection group is reiterating an argument offered in her two felony trials: That different events inside Brian and Nicole Albert’s dwelling, at 34 Fairview Street in Canton, killed her Boston police officer boyfriend within the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Learn, 45, was indicted in June 2022 on prices of second-degree homicide, motorized vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision inflicting O’Keefe’s demise.
She was tried twice, first in 2024, which resulted in a mistrial, after which in a second trial, which ended this previous June when a jury acquitted her on all of the indicted prices. She was convicted of drunk driving.
Prosecutors accused Learn of backing up into O’Keefe, her Boston Police officer boyfriend of two years, along with her SUV, leaving him to freeze and die on the entrance yard of the Canton dwelling then-owned by Brian Albert, a Boston Police colleague.
Learn’s protection argues that O’Keefe was crushed to demise inside the house, with events then dragging his physique outdoors to the entrance yard, making it seem he was hit by a automobile throughout the blizzard that early morning in late January 2022.
“For three and a half years,” the civil criticism states, “Plaintiff Karen Read was wrongly accused of homicide and subjected to suspicion, arrest, two prosecutions, and public condemnation, all resulting from the gross misconduct of the Massachusetts State Police – and those working in tandem with the MSP – to shield from liability the party or parties responsible for the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe III.”
