Karen Learn will face a brand new prosecutor when she is retried for homicide in January.
Norfolk County District Lawyer Michael Morrissey on Wednesday introduced that he has appointed Hank Brennan, who served for years as a protection lawyer for infamous Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, as a particular prosecutor for the case.
“I look forward to Attorney Brennan working in concert with the trial team of Assistant District Attorneys Adam Lally, Laura McLaughlin, and Caleb Schillinger,” Morrissey stated in an announcement wherein he described Brennan as a “highly respected and skilled former prosecutor and long-time defense attorney with over 25 years of experience in state and federal courts.”
Lally has been the first prosecutor for the reason that starting of the case, having arraigned Learn on preliminary fees at Stoughton District Court docket simply days after he stated Learn struck Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend, together with her SUV and left him to freeze and die on a Canton entrance yard amid a significant snowstorm.
Lally additionally served because the prosecutor in Learn’s trial earlier this 12 months, which Norfolk Superior Court docket Decide Beverly J. Cannone would in the end declare a mistrial.
Brennan in his personal assertion stated that he assumes the “full responsibility and all obligations for prosecuting this case and will do so meticulously, ethically, and zealously, without compromise.”
“I have two core obligations. The first is to make certain that Karen Read receives a fair trial. Ms. Read will receive the dignity and fairness that every defendant deserves in our criminal justice system,” Brennan continued. “The second is to ensure that the facts surrounding John O’Keefe’s death are fully and fairly aired in the courtroom without outside influence. I guarantee that I will work tirelessly with the trial team to prepare this case for trial in January of 2025.”
The case
Learn, 44, of Mansfield, was charged in Norfolk Superior Court docket on June 9, 2022, with second-degree homicide, motorcar manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision inflicting loss of life. Learn’s trial would start April 29, 2024.
Throughout that almost two-year hole, her lawyer David Yannetti introduced on famed Los Angeles-based lawyer Alan Jackson and the pair developed a third-party killer concept that will be the premise of Learn’s protection.
Prosecutors say Learn and O’Keefe loved the night of Jan. 28, 2022, out at two Canton bars, throughout which Learn drank as many as 9 drinks over just some hours.
Learn and O’Keefe would depart the second bar, The Waterfall, at round midnight and head over to the house of Boston Police Sgt. Brian Albert on the invitation of the household, who had additionally been on the second bar.
The prosecution’s witnesses would all testify they by no means noticed O’Keefe enter the house, however a lot of them noticed a black SUV on the fringe of the property, which prosecutors assert was Learn’s Lexus.
Learn and two different ladies would uncover O’Keefe, lifeless or dying, on the Albert’s entrance garden at round 6 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022. A lot of first responders testified that Learn stated issues alongside the road of “I hit him” on the scene.
However Learn’s protection attorneys say these have been the cries of a girl who was an emotional wreck and uttered as a option to clarify in any means this sudden and horrifying loss. As a substitute, the protection claims that O’Keefe did enter that home and was killed inside by exterior actors, which they are saying might have included Albert himself, after which dragged exterior to stage a cover-up. They are saying the Albert household is a robust native household and labored with police to border Learn.
Because the mistrial, the protection has claimed jurors advised them they have been held on just one of the fees, motorcar manslaughter, and have been able to acquit on homicide and leaving the scene of a collision. They pressed Cannone to drop the 2 fees within the upcoming trial, which she declined. They’ve since appealed to the state’s highest court docket. The O’Keefe household has additionally filed a civil lawsuit in opposition to Learn.
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