The prosecution continues its homicide case towards Karen Learn for one more week starting on Monday, and with all the Massachusetts State Police investigators and many of the state crime lab technicians but to take the stand, the case might be simply beginning to warmth up.
The already prolonged trial has slowed its pacing from 4 to 5 days of testimony per week to a mere sooner or later of testimony final week. The week forward will see three days of trial: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday — an abridged day that ends at midday.
The rationale for the truncated scheduling isn’t recognized. A Norfolk District Lawyer’s workplace spokesman mentioned that scheduling has been decided between Choose Beverly Cannone and the attorneys within the case throughout personal sidebar classes through the trial, which aren’t public report.
Learn, 44, of Mansfield, faces fees of second-degree homicide, motorized vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision inflicting the dying of O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer when he died at age 46. Prosecutors say that she struck him along with her SUV within the early hours of Jan. 23, 2022, following an argument and an evening of heavy ingesting and left him to die in a snowstorm.
Whereas Tuesday was the one trial day of final week, prosecutor Adam Lally referred to as seven new witnesses to the stand, making for the densest day of testimony thus far within the case.
State crime lab technicians and docs from Brockton’s Good Samaritan Medical Middle testified to Learn’s excessive blood alcohol degree on the night time of O’Keefe’s dying and the accidents O’Keefe suffered, together with failed efforts to convey his physique up from 80.1 diploma hypothermic state. O’Keefe was declared lifeless at 7:50 a.m.
The day started with the tip of cross-examination of ATF Agent Brian Higgins who had been the one witness referred to as on the earlier trial day. Higgins is a central determine within the protection’s third-party killer principle. They named Higgins and two others in pretrial hearings as various O’Keefe killers who then labored along with native and state police to border Learn.
Higgins throughout his testimony learn extensively from texts between himself and Learn over nine-consecutive days within the lead-up to O’Keefe’s dying. The texts revealed a burgeoning but hidden romance between the pair that made its approach into the bodily world when Learn planted a kiss on his lips exterior O’Keefe’s home after a Patriots sport watch get together there.
The protection’s principle of the case has relied partially on proof they are saying was uncovered throughout federal grand jury testimony in a separate federal probe of the Learn homicide investigation. The protection is barred from straight mentioning the federal investigation so attorneys have provide you with euphemisms for it, together with grand jury testimony during which “the state prosecutor was not present.”
Any such probe isn’t public report, and the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace has steadfastly refused to make any touch upon the matter. Performing U.S. Lawyer Joshua Levy shot down the road of questioning throughout a reporter roundtable at his workplace on Wednesday.
“No matter how many times you ask it, I’m going to give you this answer: we don’t comment on whether or not we have open investigations. I know there’s been a lot of reporting, but we have a duty to abide by our guidelines,” Levy mentioned. “I’m not going to comment on the Karen Read case. I certainly wouldn’t comment when there’s an active trial going on.”
