Karen Learn homicide retrial thus far: A abstract of the presentation, proof, controversy

It’s been a month since testimony started in Karen Learn’s second trial for the homicide of John O’Keefe, and the brand new trial has introduced a notable change in presentation.

“I mean, I didn’t think I hit him, but could I have clipped him? Could I have tapped him in the knee and incapacitated him?” Learn instructed NBC’s “Dateline” in an interview that aired final October.

It was the primary clip that prosecutor Hank Brennan performed for jurors of Learn’s personal public statements which have aired since her final flip in courtroom led to a mistrial final summer season.

That footage performed on the conclusion of his opening assertion on April 22, however he has performed many extra clips within the 5 calendar weeks and 20 trial days since, fulfilling his promise to make use of Learn’s personal phrases in opposition to her.

The case boils down to three phrases

Learn, 45, of Mansfield, faces costs of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar beneath the affect, and leaving the scene of a collision inflicting dying.

She’s accused of ramming her Lexus LX570 SUV into John O’Keefe, a Boston Police officer she had dated for about two years, and leaving him to freeze and die on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Highway in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.

Each the prosecution and protection mentioned in opening statements that the case boils down to 3 phrases.

For the prosecution, these are “I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.”

Brennan instructed jurors that the defendant mentioned these phrases herself — admitting to the crime — to first responders to the chaotic scene surrounding O’Keefe’s physique on that entrance garden.

To again this up, Brennan referred to as over the primary two weeks of trial a number of Canton Fireplace paramedics to testify to listening to this, which the protection hotly contested in cross-examination.

As a result of the protection had its personal three-word mantra for jurors to think about: “There was no collision … there was no collision, there was no collision.”

Protection lawyer Alan Jackson instructed jurors that his consumer didn’t strike O’Keefe together with her car in any respect and is the sufferer of a cover-up orchestrated by the Massachusetts State Police case officer. The investigation, he mentioned, was beset by “a cancer that can’t be cured. … And that cancer has a name: Michael Proctor.”

Jackson solid suspicion on the proprietor of 34 Fairview Highway on the time, Boston Police Sgt. Brian Albert, and the way well-connected the Albert household is round city. He instructed them Proctor’s “priority was to protect that blue wall. … To protect his friends who were at the Albert house last night.”

The ghost witness

Proctor, the villain of the protection opening assertion, has not taken the stand within the new trial, although he seems on each the prosecution and the protection’s witness lists.

There’s nonetheless loads of time for him to indicate. There have been 71 witnesses throughout 29 days of testimony within the final trial and he didn’t present up till day 22, June 10, 2024. Over the course of that testimony, Proctor threw out his status and even his profession.

He was out of labor hours after the mistrial and formally fired earlier than the brand new trial started, with the MSP citing sustained issues over his habits within the O’Keefe investigation. These issues aren’t locked away in a personnel file, however immortalized in his trial testimony.

“She’s a whack job (expletive),” Proctor learn from textual content messages about Learn he despatched to pals and even colleagues throughout his investigation. “Yes she’s a babe. Weird Fall River accent, though. No (butt).”

The subsequent day he would testify that he texted his sister about Learn: “Hopefully she kills herself.”

It’s unclear if the now-fired Proctor will take the stand this time round. He was the case officer, which suggests the first supervisor of the MSP investigation — and which the protection has repeatedly tried to counsel additionally means “lead investigator” — so it may very well be laborious as an instance components of the investigation with out him. Alternatively, he could also be an excessive amount of of a legal responsibility now to take the stand.

However the injury has already been achieved with out him. He has been a specter over the protection’s questioning of practically each witness. When forensic scientists take the stand, the protection asks who delivered the supplies to them. When police take the stand, the protection asks how lengthy Proctor may have been out of their sight and probably meddling with the proof.

However there was no clearer avatar for Proctor’s personal presence on the stand than MSP Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, Proctor’s supervisor and investigative associate. He was grilled over three days relating to Proctor’s habits and his personal supervisory failure to regulate that habits, for which the MSP slapped him with a penalty of 5 trip days.

The textual content messages

Bukhenik’s testimony boiled all the way down to his assertion that “The investigation was done with honor, integrity, and all the evidence pointed in one direction and one direction only,” and that path was Learn.

However probably the most intriguing testimony may need come from his second of three days on the stand, when he learn the whole textual content messages between Learn and ATF Agent Brian Higgins, a good friend of each Brian Albert and O’Keefe.

These textual content messages revealed a budding relationship between Learn and Higgins over the weeks earlier than O’Keefe’s dying, which no less than included one real-world kiss and one real-world date to a bar in West Roxbury.

The texts have been offered by the protection, however there have been no objections from the prosecution all through the studying. The texts assist either side, relying on how the jury interprets them.

For the protection, it casts Higgins — one of many males together with Albert they’ve cited as a doable various killer — as a rival paramour for Learn’s affections who could have resorted to fists in opposition to O’Keefe after each males drank closely that night time.

And for the prosecution, Learn may very well be seen as manipulative and offended at O’Keefe. Within the texts, she expresses jealousy and in addition contempt over having to assist elevate his niece and nephew when she had by no means needed to have kids.

Bukhenik himself testified to this view: “My opinion is that it’s an angry girlfriend trying to set up a hookup to hurt John (O’Keefe).” He would later barely rephrase this to “an angry girlfriend trying to get revenge.”

The prosecution’s proof

The prosecution’s case largely rests on bodily and digital proof involving Learn’s SUV, which jurors bought to see in particular person, parked exterior of 34 Fairview Highway within the first week of trial.

It’s undisputed that Learn’s car had a cracked passenger-side taillight on Jan. 29, 2022. However the extent of the injury and the place the injury occurred are hotly disputed.

The prosecution says that Learn’s taillight was cracked when Learn threw her car into reverse and struck O’Keefe at about 24 mph and left him there to freeze and die.

They’ve but to query MSP collision specialist Trooper Joe Paul concerning the velocity of the backup — which they did final 12 months — however they did have digital forensics examiner Shanon Burgess testify final week that the car registered a “back-up event” at 12:32 a.m. on Jan. 29.

As for bodily proof, Canton Police witnesses testified to uncovering a damaged cocktail glass and “pink spots” of blood beneath the place they have been instructed O’Keefe was discovered.

The MSP search crew, the MSP Particular Emergency Response Workforce (SERT), would additional search the scene that afternoon, commander Lt. Kevin O’Hara testified. He mentioned his group searched the realm for an hour and uncovered O’Keefe’s lacking sneaker in addition to six or seven items of taillight — each clear and pink.

Days later, extra items of taillight can be found, ending with some 46 items.

Forensic scientists testified to becoming the taillight items to Learn’s taillight housing and that microanalysis decided the plastic to be the identical as effectively. A scraping of O’Keefe’s hooded T-shirt uncovered microscopic plastic items that have been additionally a match. Different scientists testified that O’Keefe’s DNA contributed — to a really excessive diploma of scientific certainty — to a hair discovered on the SUV’s bumper and to DNA discovered on the taillight housing.

Health worker Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello testified that O’Keefe died from blunt-force trauma to the top and hypothermia.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Aizik Wolf testified that his examination of post-mortem images and Scordi-Bello’s report paints a transparent image that this was a “classic blunt trauma injury,” and that O’Keefe fell and hit his head on “solid ground.”

The protection’s proof

The protection has not but begun calling its personal witnesses. Its technique thus far has been largely conventional: discrediting prosecution witnesses, discovering various interpretations of the proof offered, and difficult the best way the investigation was dealt with.

The Proctor drawback, and Bukhenik’s supervision of Proctor, has been a high-profile instance, however different investigators have additionally been examined.

The protection criticized Canton PD Lt. Paul Gallagher for utilizing a leaf blower to course of the scene on Jan. 29, for gathering the pink spot samples in pink SOLO plastic cups, bagging proof in Cease & Store grocery baggage, and for putting the proof in unsecured areas and close to Learn’s SUV taillight the place cross-contamination may happen.

In addition they used him to verify that not one of the taillight items have been present in that first hour on the scene — which helps counsel the objects have been planted by Proctor or others.

As for these items of proof, the protection had scientists admit that some items — like a glass discovered by Proctor within the roadway — was not a bodily match to anything on the scene. And the hair pattern was analyzed for mitochondrial DNA, which is just from the mom, so anybody inside O’Keefe’s matrilineal line may have contributed.

As for the docs, the protection emphasised that the health worker listed “undetermined” for method of dying, as she couldn’t conclude it was a murder. The neurosurgeon testified that lacerations above O’Keefe’s eye weren’t a part of his conclusion of a fall to the bottom.

However maybe probably the most intense cross-examination was reserved for the digital forensic examiner Burgess.

Protection lawyer Robert Alessi seized on “academic dishonesty” by Burgess, who doesn’t maintain a bachelor’s diploma, for itemizing a bachelor’s diploma on his CV, his LinkedIn profile, and on his biography on his employer’s web site. Burgess countered that he has by no means claimed to to carry a bachelor’s diploma and the diploma was being “currently pursued.”

Then comes Jennifer McCabe, a determine as central to the protection’s idea of a cover-up as Albert and Higgins. She made a seek for “hos long to die in cold” — the primary phrase being a typo for “how” — on her telephone, however what time she made the search is hotly contested.

She — and two prosecution specialists, Ian Whiffin and Jessica Hyde — says she made the search at round 6:20 a.m. at Learn’s request as the ladies surrounded O’Keefe.

However the protection counters that their knowledgeable has her making the search at 2:27 a.m. Which means she was looking for hypothermia hours earlier than she allegedly discovered O’Keefe and thus knew about his destiny beforehand. This, the protection says, is proof of a conspiracy.

Forward

The case took an prolonged break, with not solely Memorial Day Monday off but in addition the earlier Thursday and Friday. Courtroom resumes on Tuesday.