All eyes are on Norfolk County, once more.
On the eve of the Karen Learn retrial, Choose Beverly Cannone handed down rulings associated to jurors and a protection skilled for the closely scrutinized Canton homicide case.
The Norfolk Superior Courtroom choose in Dedham ordered that the Learn juror record will probably be impounded, and reporters are banned from bodily describing jurors to the general public.
“This case has garnered significant and divisive attention in Massachusetts and across the country,” Cannone wrote within the order. “Individuals associated with this case have been charged with intimidation, which charges remain pending. At least one deliberating juror from the first trial submitted an affidavit to the court detailing reasonable fear for the safety of their family should the list of jurors be made available to the public.
“This court concludes that the fear expressed by that juror coupled with the inordinate amount of public attention to this trial and its outcome is good cause to impound the Clerk’s List of Jurors for Norfolk County Courthouse for the duration of empanelment,” the choose added.
Learn, 45, is charged with second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle below the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting dying. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years on the time, on Jan. 29, 2022.
Prosecutors allege that Learn struck O’Keefe, who she had dated for roughly two years, along with her Lexus SUV after an evening of heavy ingesting and left him to freeze and die on a Canton entrance yard within the early morning.
Learn’s protection attorneys have countered all through the case that Learn has been framed by corrupt and incompetent native and state cops and prosecutors working with the proprietor of the house whose garden O’Keefe was discovered. Protection attorneys say that O’Keefe made it into the house that evening and was crushed to dying inside.
Learn’s first trial resulted in a mistrial final 12 months. The retrial is about to start out on Tuesday.
As jurors get referred to as for the case, journalists won’t be allowed to explain them.
“Spectators and media are prohibited from attempting to provide specific identifying information of jurors or potential jurors to the public including physical descriptions of the jurors,” the choose wrote on Monday.
Additionally, there are 150 names on the mixed witness record for the case.
Nevertheless, Learn’s protection crew has not included their three names, which had been on the prosecutors’ potential witness record: Alan Jackson, David Yannetti, and Elizabeth Little.
“Defendant objects to the inclusion of Ms. Read’s attorneys on the witness list,” reads a footnote for the witness record doc. “This request is not made in good faith.
“If the Commonwealth subpoenaed defense counsel in this case, it would constitute a gross violation of Rules of Professional Conduct 3.8, which prohibits prosecutors from subpoenaing a lawyer in a criminal proceeding to present evidence about a past or present client absent exceptional circumstances,” the footnote provides.
As well as, prosecutors have been pushing to not enable protection skilled Michael Easter, a retired FBI agent, from testifying concerning the police’s alleged failure to comply with commonplace investigative insurance policies and protocols.
Cannone is now permitting the prosecutors’ movement to ban Easter’s testimony. The skilled testimony is “not needed” for the jury to find out whether or not the investigation was compromised, she dominated.
“The court cannot find nor has defense counsel cited one Massachusetts case where an expert was permitted
to opine on the general competency of a police investigation,” Cannone wrote in her order.
“Easter’s proposed testimony concerns basic aspects of a police investigation which are within the common knowledge of a layperson,” the choose added. “Through zealous cross-examination of police witnesses the defendant can cast doubt on the reliability of the investigation by demonstrating how it differed from standard practices and procedures and can raise the issue of potential bias by police action or inaction as counsel did effectively during the first trial.”
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