The exhaustive activity of seating a jury for the Karen Learn trial has reached its tenth day, with the overwhelming majority of potential jurors indicating that they had mentioned the case and a big share had fashioned an opinion.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of hanging Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, 46, her boyfriend of about two years, together with her SUV and leaving him to die in a serious snowstorm on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Street in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
She was tried final 12 months on prices of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar beneath the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting dying, however that resulted in a mistrial on July 1, 2024, after the jury reported an deadlock by means of three notes.
Even forward of the primary trial, the case had grow to be a regional firestorm for each lovers of true crime and people moved by protection allegations of main public official and police corruption. Now, because it strikes towards opening statements within the retrial, its nationwide prominence has grown even additional.
A lot of the general public curiosity has been fueled by public feedback from the defendant herself, who has performed varied journal interviews and even gave excessive entry to herself and her authorized group for the documentary “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read,” which aired final month on the community Investigation Discovery — generally known as ID — and streamed on (HBO) MAX.
The prosecution has seized on Learn’s public feedback and on Tuesday filed a discover that it “intends to introduce recorded statements in its opening statement.”
That revelation got here as a part of an general movement stating prosecutors will produce a duplicate of the recorded statements to the court docket forward of time “for a ruling on admissibility,” and that these will probably be marked for the file. The movement requests that the court docket order the protection to do the identical for its opening assertion.
Jury choice continues
The case’s reputation has made seating a jury a formidable activity. Jury choice is now in its third week, though the outcomes Friday, during which attorneys had chosen their objective of 16 jurors for trial, promised that the trial would start in earnest quickly. However the effort continues.
Events reconvened Monday to attempt to bolster the jury pool however ended the day with the identical quantity after one dismissal and a brand new seating. The hunt for added jurors continues as we speak, when 54 further potential jurors have been introduced into Norfolk Superior Courtroom.
Of these, 43 indicated throughout normal questioning that that they had at the very least heard of or mentioned the case. One other subset of 26 potential jurors indicated that they had fashioned an opinion, and eight of them indicated that they had established a bias within the case that might make objectivity troublesome.
Six of them stated that they had a philosophical purpose to not be seated as a juror and 25 stated it might be a hardship to serve. The window for hardship is kind of broad on this case: Choose Beverly J. Cannone says the precise trial might take so long as eight weeks.
Potential jurors have already crammed out their questionnaires and attorneys have reviewed them. Attorneys are actually questioning sure potential jurors.
It is a creating story.
Initially Printed:
