A candidate working for Norfolk County District Lawyer is looking on Michael Morrissey to resign from the submit after a jury acquitted Karen Learn of second-degree homicide, a cost she says indicators an inexperienced prosecutor.
Dedham resident Djuna Perkins, a former assistant lawyer normal and head of the Suffolk County DA’s home violence unit, can be talking out towards Morrissey for giving John O’Keefe’s household “false hope about the outcome.”
Perkins is searching for to unseat Morrissey after throwing her hat within the political ring for a submit that voters is not going to determine till November 2026.
“Yesterday, a Norfolk County jury found Karen Read not guilty for the death of John O’Keefe in a case that captured international attention,” Perkins wrote in a social media submit on Thursday.
“A Boston Police Officer, family member, and friend of so many is dead,” she added. “Meanwhile, the erosion of trust caused by this disastrous prosecution resulted in a crisis with an impact that extends far beyond the borders of Norfolk County.”
Prosecutors accused Learn of backing up into O’Keefe, her Boston Police officer boyfriend of two years, together with her SUV after yet one more drunken bout of combating within the troubled relationship, leaving him to freeze and die on the entrance yard of a Canton dwelling the place the pair was speculated to proceed an evening out after the bars closed.
Learn had been charged with second-degree homicide, motorized vehicle manslaughter whereas working underneath the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting loss of life within the killing of O’Keefe, within the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
However jurors in her retrial convicted Learn of simply working underneath the affect – an final result that the protection has stated is a win for the reason that verdict got here out Wednesday.
“No experienced prosecutor would ever have charged Karen Read with second-degree murder in the absence of stronger evidence about how he died,” Perkins acknowledged in her submit, “and in light of compelling evidence that Read was too intoxicated to form the intent required to convict her of murder.”
“Charging someone without a good faith basis to believe the Commonwealth can meet the high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is unethical,” she added. “I have not spoken to a single current or former prosecutor who believed the evidence supported this charge.”
Perkins highlighted different factors backing up her name for Morrissey to resign, a stance she made moments after the jury foreman learn the decision. Tons of of Learn supporters who packed the road exterior Norfolk Superior Courtroom for the extremely anticipated second echoed Perkins’ name, chanting “Morrissey resign.”
In response to a Herald request for touch upon the decision and calls to resign, the Norfolk County District Lawyer’s Workplace shared a WBZ information article from earlier Thursday.
“The jury has spoken,” Morrissey advised the tv information outlet.
Morrissey, who earned $205,973 in whole pay final 12 months, made his ideas recognized on the Learn case in an August 2023 video assertion, blasting individuals on the web for spreading “baseless” theories.
“We try people in the court and not on the internet for a reason,” the DA stated on the time. “The internet has no rules of evidence. The internet has no punishment for perjury. And the internet does not know all the facts.”
He added: “The harassment of witnesses in the murder prosecution of Karen Read is absolutely baseless. It should be an outrage to any decent person — and it needs to stop. Innuendo is not evidence. False narratives are not evidence.”
In her submit on Thursday, Perkins pointed to that video, saying it “violated the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct for prosecutors.”
“This is unconscionable behavior for a District Attorney,” she wrote.
Morrissey, 70, was first elected to workplace in 2010.
Opinion Diagnostics, a Massachusetts-based polling and market analysis agency, discovered that solely 4% of 1,170 Norfolk County residents who meet the {qualifications} to be chosen as jurors and responded to a post-verdict survey “affirmatively believe” Morrissey deserves reelection.
It’s not simply the Karen Learn saga that has thrust the DA’s workplace into huge public scrutiny, Perkins stated, referencing the murders of Sandra Birchmore in Canton and Ana Walshe in Cohasset, and the hate-motivated assault on a Brookline kosher grocery retailer final Sunday, amongst different high-level instances.
“District Attorney Morrissey’s exclusive focus on the prosecution of Karen Read has come at the expense of all these families,” Perkins stated, “and of other efforts that could have been made to prevent crime in our community.”
Forward of Learn’s retrial, Morrissey appointed Hank Brennan, who served for years as a protection lawyer for infamous Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, as a particular prosecutor for the case.
Brennan, who has not made public feedback in regards to the verdict, earned at the least $250,000 prosecuting the case.
In an interview on the Howie Carr Present on Thursday, protection lawyer Alan Jackson known as the Learn case the “most challenging … I have ever tried in my life,” pointing to how the prosecution filed a slew of motions “trying to keep our witnesses away from the jurors.”
“Do better. Do better, sir,” Jackson stated in response to what his message for Morrissey can be. “You are in the job of seeking justice, you are not in the job of winning cases.”
Perkins echoed Jackson, saying that after salaries, the DA’s workplace’s $14 million price range “leaves only $2.7 million for all operational expenses.” Morrissey has “spent more than one-third of his entire operating budget for the special prosecutor and expert witnesses on the retrial alone.”
“DA Morrissey doubled- and tripled-down on using every resource possible to prove he was right, rather than seeking justice,” Perkins wrote.
“Worst of all, Morrissey’s decisions in the Karen Read case gave John O’Keefe’s family false hope about the outcome,” she added. “For 3 years, the household of John O’Keefe has patiently hoped and waited for the promised final result, using the emotional curler coaster of each new scandal and dealing with battle on the courthouse day-after-day for months at a time, solely to have their hopes for justice dashed not as soon as however twice.
“Beyond the grief from the death itself, this experience in the criminal justice system causes devastating emotional harm. The job of the District Attorney is to empower victims of crime, not make them pawns in his quest for validation.”
