Prosecutors within the Karen Learn homicide case won’t be given communications between the defendant and her lawyer within the early days of the case.
It got here the identical day that the decide additionally declined the protection’s newest effort to have the fees thrown out for alleged “extraordinary governmental misconduct.”
Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan verbally argued in a listening to Tuesday that Learn had “waived” her proper to the privileged communications by talking publicly in regards to the contents of communications between herself and legal professional David Yannetti. Brennan filed a movement for the communications final week.
Protection legal professional Robert Alessi started his problem to the request by stressing that the textual content messages sought in the course of the three-day interval instantly following sufferer John O’Keefe’s dying on Jan. 29, 2022, are privileged and that the privateness of communications between a defendant and her legal professional are “sacrosanct” and constitutionally protected.
The request, Alessi stated, “should unsettle every criminal defense attorney in this commonwealth and it probably does.”
Earlier than Alessi obtained far in his argument, nonetheless, Norfolk Superior Courtroom Choose Beverly J. Cannone lower him off as a result of she had already made up her thoughts.
“I understand the Commonwealth’s request is narrow and tailored … but I’m not going to give you this information, Mr. Brennan,” Cannone stated. “Your motion is denied.”
The listening to was the final one scheduled earlier than jury empanelment begins on April 1.
The events in the course of the listening to additionally addressed the protection’s skill to lift a third-party perpetrator protection and Brennan’s request for unedited footage of Learn interviews for the docuseries “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read,” which aired over 5 elements final week on the community ID, or Investigative Discovery, and streamed on MAX.
Learn, 45, is accused of putting O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police officer, together with her automotive and leaving him to die in a serious snowstorm on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Highway in Canton.
Dismissal movement denied
Learn’s newest in a string of efforts to have her case dismissed didn’t transfer Cannone, who dominated Tuesday afternoon {that a} dismissal can be “a drastic sanction justified only in response to the most egregious and truly harmful conduct.”
“In all but the worst cases, the appropriate remedy is at best, a new trial, such as the one that is scheduled to begin soon,” Cannone wrote in her 27-page resolution issued Tuesday afternoon. “Because the claimed violations here do not rise to a level that would justify the most draconian sanction of dismissal, and because the defendant’s constitutional rights can be fully protected in the coming trial, her motion to dismiss is DENIED.”
The movement, filed late final month, was unbiased of the remainder of the motions to quash the case since final 12 months’s mistrial, which had been all primarily based on Learn’s Double Jeopardy protections for being tried on the identical fees.
The staff argued that jurors after the mistrial stated that they had been able to acquit on the homicide and leaving the scene fees, and was solely held on the manslaughter cost however didn’t know they may ship a partial verdict.
They took their argument to Cannone, the state Supreme Judicial Courtroom and federal courtroom, and misplaced every time. They now have an energetic attraction within the federal First Circuit Courtroom of Appeals.
Third-party perpetrator
Learn’s staff, identical to final time, needs to lift a third-party culpability protection, whereby they argue to the jurors that it was not Learn however others who killed O’Keefe after which framed their consumer.
Yannetti has named three folks his staff consider may very well be concerned: Brian Albert, a BPD sergeant who owned the property that was the positioning of O’Keefe’s dying; Brian Higgins, an ATF agent and Albert’s good friend who was there that evening and has romantic curiosity in Learn; and Colin Albert, Brian Albert’s nephew, who the protection argues had beef with O’Keefe.
Brennan stated Tuesday the protection solely has “feeble” proof to counsel any of them had motive and alternative and that the protection simply needs to mount “a general attack, a character assassination.”
Yannetti argued they every did and that they weren’t correctly investigated due to the “blue wall,” which means, he stated, that “If you’re a police officer, you get a pass.”
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