A battle over the consultants the protection used at Karen Learn’s final homicide trial in an try and discredit the concept that John O’Keefe was killed by a automobile strike is taking middle stage at a motions listening to lower than per week earlier than opening statements.
Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan instructed Decide Beverly J. Cannone that he’s involved with a lack of awareness relating to two consultants from ARCCA, a Pittsburgh-based forensic science group, who every testified that of their evaluation O’Keefe’s deadly accidents couldn’t have resulted from a car strike.
“This is the very issue I have been concerned about from the beginning of this case,” Brennan mentioned. “My intent was never to preclude ARCCA from testifying. Never. My intention was to prevent the defense from doing trial by ambush.”
Brennan mentioned that he desires to consultants to have the ability to testify, however be restricted to solely reviews and evaluation that made it in by deadlines and that they be precluded from testifying to something that is available in late and that the prosecution has no time to arrange for.
The consultants, Andrew Rentschler and Daniel Wolfe, and their agency had initially been employed by the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace in Boston throughout a mysterious probe of the investigation involving O’Keefe’s dying in Jan. 29, 2022. Whereas Brennan definitively acknowledged in courtroom earlier this 12 months that the federal investigation was over, its fingerprints stay all around the Learn case.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of hanging Boston Police Officer O’Keefe, 46, her boyfriend of about two years, together with her SUV and leaving him to freeze and die in a serious snowstorm on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Street in Canton.
She was tried final 12 months on expenses of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle beneath the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting dying, however that led to a mistrial on July 1, 2024, after the jury reported an deadlock.
Attorneys secured 18 jurors on Tuesday, sufficient for the trial to start out. Opening statements are anticipated to happen on Tuesday.
Relating to the ARCCA consultants, protection legal professional Alan Jackson mentioned that he and his workforce have supplied every thing they’ll and that the invention course of — for either side — is a fluid course of and sometimes takes place on timelines exterior of attorneys’ management.
On the subject of these consultants, he mentioned, that course of is extra managed. Whereas he mentioned the protection turned over some 1,000 pages final week relating to the ARCCA consultants, there’s different data he can’t flip over as a result of he doesn’t have entry to it himself.
He mentioned that the U.S. Lawyer gave permission to either side to retain ARCCA for the state trial and that the protection took up the provide. However ARCCA’s dealings within the federal probe are off limits. They’re nonetheless not allowed to testify to categorized data, like “what their directives were, that is confidential.”
It is a creating story.
Charles Krupa Pool picture
Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan addresses potential jurors throughout jury choice for the trial of Karen Learn at Norfolk Superior Courtroom on April 3 in Dedham. (Charles Krupa Pool picture)
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