Karen Learn has taken her double jeopardy problem to toss the homicide cost in opposition to her scheduled for retrial this spring to federal court docket, submitting a habeas corpus declare with the U.S. District Court docket in Boston.
The federal submitting comes on the identical day Learn is at Norfolk Superior Court docket in Dedham for a motions listening to that features her staff’s newest movement to dismiss the case.
Learn, 44, is charged with second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle below the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting loss of life. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years on the time, on Jan. 29, 2022.
Within the federal submitting, Learn is asking the court docket, to “Issue a writ of habeas corpus and rule that Ms. Read’s re-prosecution on Counts 1 and 3 would violate her Double Jeopardy rights.”
“I am claiming that my April 2025 retrial violates my federal Double Jeopardy rights,” Learn writes within the federal petition.
Learn has filed the petition in opposition to Norfolk County Superior Court docket and the Massachusetts Lawyer Basic.
This comes after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court docket issued a call final week, discovering that Learn’s pending retrial didn’t violate her rights in opposition to double jeopardy.
Learn’s attorneys have been arguing that a number of jurors reached out after final yr’s mistrial to say that they have been solely held on Depend 2, which is the OUI manslaughter cost, and have been able to acquit on the opposite costs. They are saying that no different juror has disputed this declare and that to proceed to attempt her on these costs could be double jeopardy.
At Norfolk Superior Court docket this morning, Learn’s protection staff and prosecutors from the Norfolk DA’s workplace have wrangled over a handful of motions already.
First, Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan stated he reached a deal to obtain supplies wished from a Boston 25 interview with Learn’s mother and father, to be delivered by March 1.
Second, protection legal professional Alan Jackson argued to be given a “forensically sound” copy of Canton Police Division surveillance footage from when supplies, together with Learn’s Lexus SUV, have been introduced there following O’Keefe’s loss of life.
Third, Decide Beverly Cannone requested that protection legal professional David Yannetti file one other affidavit in help of the staff’s request to herald New York Metropolis-based legal professional Mark Bederow.
Brennan has heavy concern with this lawyer request as a result of Bederow additionally represents Holden-based blogger Aidan Kearney, who has lined the Learn case from a closely pro-Learn perspective and faces a number of counts of witness intimidation concerning witnesses in Learn’s case.
The listening to is ongoing and attorneys have but to argue the protection’s movement to dismiss.
The Case
Prosecutors allege that Learn struck O’Keefe, a Boston Police officer who she had dated for roughly two years, together 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 loss of life inside.
This can be a growing story.
Initially Revealed:
