Prosecutors within the Karen Learn case are requesting extra information from the defendant’s SUV that they argue would additional bolster their case, pinpointing the automobile’s “precise locations” the morning that former Boston police officer John O’Keefe died.
Hank Brennan, appointed as particular prosecutor for Learn’s second trial scheduled for late January, is requesting extra testing be performed on the defendant’s Lexus’ telematics system, which he mentioned shops key proof.
Brennan filed the request in Norfolk Superior Court docket final Friday.
Shanon Burgess, a digital forensic skilled who’d carry out the testing, “has opined that significant data was likely not acquired during the chip-off procedure,” final December, Brennan wrote in his submitting.
The process, Brennan highlighted, is a digital information extraction that bodily removes reminiscence chips from a automobile’s infotainment and telematics programs.
“Mr. Burgess, through his training and experience, believes the evidence acquired in the ‘chip-off’ was incomplete and that more data that was not acquired exists on the chips,” the prosecutor wrote.
Particularly, the request features a overview of the chips beforehand eliminated and a subsequent reattachment to the board in Learn’s automobile, and “updated programming and current software versions” can be used to “maximize the chances of a complete acquisition.”
Prosecutors are in search of observe logs which they described as an “ordered sequence of GPS coordinate measurements stored by a satellite navigation system,” proof that could be “exculpatory or inculpatory.”
The testing may additionally “potentially identify any Wi-Fi connections that would (be identified) by the vehicle as it traveled on its route,” Brennan wrote.
“The Commonwealth provided and introduced at trial video depicting some of the defendant’s travels on January 29, 2022,” he wrote in his request. “The additional data, likely to be retrievable would assist in identifying the precise locations that the defendant’s Lexus traveled from the time that the defendant struck and killed Mr. John O’Keefe until the time the vehicle was seized.”
Prosecutors say Learn struck O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer, and her boyfriend of two years, along with her SUV following a drunken argument and left him to die in a snowstorm.
O’Keefe died on the age of 46.
Protection attorneys counter that exterior actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and native police to border Learn for his homicide.
Massachusetts State Police Trooper Joe Paul, a collision specialist and crash reconstructionist, testified within the first trial that information he recovered from Learn’s Lexus SUV and O’Keefe’s accidents had been “consistent with a pedestrian strike.”
Paul additionally testified that whereas no information was recovered from the “airbag control module,” that means it didn’t register a crash, that isn’t uncommon for collisions with pedestrians.
“Striking a pedestrian isn’t going to change the velocity of the vehicle as quickly as two vehicles crashing,” he mentioned.
Learn’s protection workforce rested their case within the first trial after three witnesses, together with two employed initially by the FBI, mentioned the accidents sustained by O’Keefe and the injury to Learn’s SUV had been inconsistent with a pedestrian strike, no matter different proof.
Brennan, who was not concerned with the primary trial, requested a listening to inside fourteen days to “permit prompt testing and production of relevant discovery.”
Learn has pleaded not responsible and awaits retrial on fees of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar beneath the affect and leaving the scene of a deadly accident. Her two-month prison trial resulted in July when the choose declared a mistrial after jurors mentioned they had been deadlocked.
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