Karen Learn case: Qualifying listening to on canine chew skilled prolonged into second day

A listening to to find out whether or not the protection can use their most popular canine chew skilled in the second trial of Karen Learn happened in a marathon session that extra resembled a trial day than a typical movement listening to. It should proceed right into a second day.

“Those wounds were inflicted by a dog attack,” Dr. Marie Russell mentioned as she examined a photograph of the arm of John O’Keefe, Learn’s alleged sufferer, throughout a listening to on her {qualifications} Thursday at Norfolk Superior Courtroom in Dedham.

“Do you hold that opinion to a reasonable degree of medical certainty?” protection lawyer Robert Alessi requested as his follow-up.

“Yes,” Russell responded. “I went over it with my many years of experience in wounds, and dog bites in particular … and that’s how I came to that opinion.”

The listening to to requalify Russell, who testified to the identical opinion in the course of the first trial that ended in the summertime with a hung jury, clearly went longer than observers, and even these collaborating, predicted.

“Clearly we’re going to have to come back another day,” Decide Beverly Cannone mentioned on the prime of the sixth hour of the day and the fifth of lively court docket. Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan, who introduced the problem, had but to get an opportunity to query the witness. The listening to is scheduled to renew on Jan. 7.

Alessi over the course of practically 5 hours, in his first main displaying since becoming a member of the now-four lawyer protection workforce late final month, guided Russell by way of testimony detailing her profession, {qualifications} and, in granular element, her skilled opinions on the case.

Russell, a retired emergency room physician at a Los Angeles-area hospital ranked within the prime tier for trauma circumstances in addition to a forensic pathologist and health worker, testified that it was her skilled opinion that the injuries to Keefe’s physique, and the associated holes and tears within the clothes he wore on Jan. 29, 2022, the morning of his demise, have been brought on by canine bites.

She additional rejected that the injuries could possibly be brought on by a motorcar collision, which is how the prosecution says Learn killed O’Keefe, saying that none of them comply with the everyday patterns of a motorcar strike. At trial, the protection had three different specialists who additionally concluded that O’Keefe’s wounds couldn’t have come from a motorcar strike.

The case

Prosecutors say that Learn, 44, of Mansfield, struck O’Keefe together with her Lexus SUV following an evening of consuming and one more argument of their fraught two-year relationship and left him to freeze and die on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Highway in Canton, the place the pair have been imagined to take part in an after occasion after the bars on the town had closed. She faces costs of second-degree homicide, motorcar manslaughter whereas working underneath the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting demise.

The protection countered with their very own concept of the case, positing that not solely is Learn harmless however that others are accountable for O’Keefe’s homicide.

One concept they hinted at within the trial is that individuals inside the house, presumably together with then-homeowner Brian Albert, a fellow Boston cop, beat O’Keefe to demise after which used their affect on the town to border Learn. In addition they mentioned that Albert’s canine, a German shepherd named Chloe, participated within the assault — pointing towards wounds on his arm that Russell testified have been canine bites.

The problem

Brennan lastly bought to start the questioning of the witness he has challenged since his first courtroom look on Nov. 13 within the final hour of the court docket day.

Brennan wrote in a movement formally difficult Russell that the protection had “failed to prove that Dr. Russell is a qualified expert in the field of canine bites or claw marks, veterinary medical science, forensic odontology, or canine behaviors” and that her testimony “cannot be reliably applied to facts.” He additional mentioned she shouldn’t have been certified to testify within the first trial, and that’s an opinion he put ahead in speedy questioning.

“Other than this trial earlier this year, have you ever been qualified in any court as a dog bite expert?” Brennan requested.

“No. It’s never come up,” she responded.

Brennan challenged Russell on all facets of her {qualifications} from the minute — she doesn’t record any particular canine chew expertise apart from itemizing her two peer-reviewed articles on the topic in her curriculum vitae — to the philosophical.

“Just because you’ve seen thousands of broken bones, that doesn’t make you an expert in orthopedics, does it?” Brennan mentioned.

“No,” she responded and, upon additional questioning on this observe, added, “I have not ordained myself as an expert in orthopedics. I have expertise.”