Karen Learn will get to maintain her authorized group in place.
Norfolk Superior Court docket Decide Beverly Cannone dominated this morning that Learn’s protection group — and significantly legal professional Alan Jackson — had not been totally open and truthful about its dealings with two witnesses from final yr’s trial.
Regardless of that, Learn’s proper to pick her personal illustration received over and Cannone let Jackson, an legal professional from Los Angeles, California, stay in Massachusetts to signify Learn.
Cannone additionally dominated that the 2 witnesses from ARCCA can stay on the witness record.
That is the the primary of two remaining hearings scheduled earlier than the trial date of April 1.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield is charged with second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar 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.
She was tried on these expenses final yr however that resulted in mistrial after jurors returned three notes indicating, in more and more assertive language, that they may not come to a unanimous choice.
The case has seen a flurry of exercise in the mean time. The protection mounted a multi-pronged effort to have the fees tossed primarily based on their competition that 5 jurors got here ahead after trial to say that the jury was able to unanimously acquit on the homicide and leaving the scene counts, however have been solely held on the manslaughter cost.
The protection efforts failed earlier than Cannone, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court docket and in a plea for habeas corpus filed in federal courtroom — the argument there being that Learn, who has been out on bail for the reason that starting of the case, be freed of unjust prosecution. And so the events are finalizing preparations for trial.
On Monday night time, the primary two episodes of a five-part documentary collection on the Learn case and trial have been launched on Investigation Discovery and MAX (the previous HBO streaming platform). Learn stated she desires the collection to be her “testimony” on the case and revealed not less than two new items of her story that particular prosecutor Hank Brennan referenced in courtroom on Tuesday.
“The defendant suggested that Mr. O’Keefe took her vodka soda glass from out of her car … and another claim that Ms. Read took a piece of glass from Mr. O’Keefe’s face. Never heard that before,” Brennan stated whereas arguing a movement on proof for the upcoming trial. “I think first I’d like to consider this new information that we learned last night.”
Jackson’s destiny within the case has been in query since a Feb. 25 listening to, which was a continuation of 1 the week earlier than that resulted in a cliffhanger when Brennan stated that Jackson had considerably extra dealings with two protection specialists — and paid them cash — than was disclosed to the courtroom. Cannone instantly closed the listening to.
Within the Feb. 25 listening to, Learn legal professional Robert Alessi, who was not a member of the trial group final yr, went via a chronology of the protection group’s interactions with the 2 witnesses in query: Daniel Wolfe and Andrew Rentschler, of ARCCA, LLC.
Over the past trial, the pair testified that O’Keefe couldn’t have been struck by Learn’s Lexus because the prosecution contends.
Briefly, Alessi argued that the protection group spoke to Wolfe and Rentschler “only for the purposes of coordination of their testimony and their background,” that they didn’t have any intention to pay the specialists — that means an inducement — “unless one tries to define inducement as being the hope that you’ll get to have the experts testify on behalf of the defense” and that, forward of their trial testimony, “the rule of the road was there would be no substantive conversations with the ARCCA experts.”
He additionally admitted that the protection group paid the pair, who have been initially retained for the federal probe of the investigation, $23,000.
The listening to is ongoing. This can be a creating story.
Initially Revealed:
