Juror #1, the foreman within the Karen Learn retrial, instructed the Herald there was no “a-ha moment” within the grueling case that he mentioned wasted the taxpayers’ cash on paper-thin proof that didn’t convey any consolation to the sufferer’s household.
The unforgivable proven fact that investigators didn’t swarm the home on the homicide scene on 34 Fairview Street in Canton throughout a nor’easter was “shoddy work” and a blatant “red flag,” the foreman added. That’s why the one responsible discovering was drunken driving.
“If that body was on my front steps, I know my house would have been stormed,” the juror, who’s Black and grew up in Jamaica Plain, mentioned. “The texts from Trooper Proctor — ‘bitch’ and ‘(expletive)’ — additionally confirmed a critical bias, but I needed to put my private opinion apart.
“It all seemed like a lot of wishy-washy privilege,” the foreman mentioned. “We had to look at the evidence, and a lot of it didn’t make sense. There was no meat! No a-ha moment. No one proved there was a collision — even with all that jargon. And all the jurors agreed.”
The juror, who requested that his title not be revealed, spoke with the Herald by phone late Friday afternoon alongside along with his spouse. The couple has three youngsters, they usually have come painfully near crimes earlier than. The juror mentioned he knew each Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who alongside along with his terrorist brother Tamerlan, detonated two bombs on the end line of the Boston Marathon in April of 2013, and bombing sufferer, 8-year-old Martin Richard.
Plus, his spouse was working at MIT the evening campus cop Sean Collier was executed by the Tsarnaevs, who would quickly have interaction in a lethal firefight with police in close by Watertown that in the end led to Tamerlan’s loss of life and Dzhokhar’s seize. His spouse took a prepare residence, avoiding any hassle. The juror mentioned he works with at-risk youth in Dorchester and met each Dzhokhar and younger Martin whereas working at a constitution faculty within the metropolis.
“We said ‘Of Course!’ I was then picked for the Karen Read jury,” the couple added collectively over the cellphone, sharing within the irony.
The juror mentioned he’s nonetheless combating the whirlwind case and the occasions he’d gaze over at sufferer John O’Keefe’s mom, who would wipe away tears when pictures have been proven of the Boston Police officer along with his head break up open. Nonetheless, he added the jury couldn’t lock up Learn, the officer’s girlfriend, on the measly proof offered.
A juror’s hesitation
The foreman added that the jury’s announcement of a verdict on Wednesday that was all of a sudden pulled again was over one male juror who had doubts.
“At lunch, I requested the juror, ‘Are you OK?’
“‘Do you think I can take back my vote?’ he requested.
“Other jurors got a little nervous,” the foreman added, “but 20 minutes later he said ‘OK.’ Guilty of OUI.”
It was the one cost they agreed on and the one clear proof — “without a doubt,” the foreman added.
“We only went with what was put in front of us,” he mentioned of the panel, seven girls and 5 males. “I’m still asking, ‘where is the justice for John?’”
The price of the case
One other juror talking out after the decision says she is disgusted by how a lot taxpayer cash the Commonwealth has poured into the case and the way O’Keefe’s household continues to be searching for justice.
Walpole resident Paula Prado mentioned she feels “deeply” for the previous BPD officer’s household.
“It is not our fault that they didn’t find who killed John O’Keefe,” Prado mentioned in an interview with the Howie Carr Present on Friday. “The Commonwealth and the investigation, they couldn’t show that it was Karen Learn. For us, we had sufficient affordable doubt that it wasn’t her, and we couldn’t convict her of something.
“I really hope the O’Keefes can find who actually killed John O’Keefe,” she added, “and the DA (Michael Morrissey) reopens the case, and things keep going from there. I will be following, I will be watching closely. It broke my heart to see that family in court that day.”
All that Morrissey has mentioned because the jury delivered the decision on Wednesday is a four-word assertion, supplied to WBZ: “The jury has spoken.”
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, had confronted as much as life in jail if convicted of second-degree homicide, the top-level offense charged towards her. She was additionally charged with manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle beneath the affect of liquor and leaving the scene of an accident leading to loss of life.
Prosecutors accused Learn of backing up into O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, along with her SUV, leaving him to freeze and die on the entrance yard of a Canton residence the place the pair was speculated to proceed an evening out after the bars closed, within the early snowy morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
However Prado and the jury didn’t purchase the argument. In her radio interview on Friday, she mentioned the hefty price ticket that went into prosecuting Learn baffled her and fellow jurors.
Prado particularly identified the $400,000 spent on Aperture, an accident reconstruction agency that the Commonwealth pulled two witnesses from. Each testified that Learn’s Lexus LX570 doubtless struck O’Keefe at round 12:32 a.m. on the morning of his loss of life.
Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan’s paycheck of a minimum of $250,000 for the retrial additionally caught Prado’s eye.
“Every time we got on the bus, especially in the beginning, we all think, ‘How much money is the city, the state, putting on the police following us, the bus, and everything?’” Prado mentioned. “Yeah, it bothers me a lot.”
Learn’s protection countered that O’Keefe made it inside the house on Fairview Street and was killed by others inside, together with probably then-homeowner Brian Albert, who was a fellow Boston Police officer. It argued that the well-connected police household then labored with native and state police investigators to cowl up the crime and body Learn.
When requested whether or not Prado had fashioned a idea about O’Keefe’s loss of life, she responded that she does, suggesting that Learn “maybe clipped him” along with her SUV, primarily based on knowledge from Aperture.
Canine-bit idea
The scratches on O’Keefe’s arm, Prado mentioned, didn’t seem to return from Learn’s damaged taillight however fairly from a canine, aligning with the protection’s idea concerning the Albert’s German Sheppard named “Chloe” being concerned in his loss of life.
“Something happened inside the house,” Prado mentioned. “What is? I don’t know. … I don’t understand why the Alberts didn’t come out, and why the dog didn’t bark at all. … There were those holes we can’t fill in.”
The Alberts and key prosecution witnesses, most of whom weren’t referred to as to the stand within the retrial however testified within the first trial, mentioned they didn’t see O’Keefe enter the house that early morning.
What concerning the FBI?
Choose Beverly Cannone barred the prosecution and protection from immediately referencing the federal probe into the investigation, which has since ended. Prado mentioned she realized early on that the FBI had been concerned, however it “wasn’t something that we took into consideration” throughout deliberations.
Prado mentioned her ideas about Brennan modified all through the trial and that she “can’t judge him as a lawyer because the case was awful, full of holes.” She added that she felt Cannone, regardless of being “very nice,” gave an excessive amount of safety to the prosecution with quite a few objections throughout key protection witnesses.
Prado took a shot at Boston Police Officer Kelly Dever, who was a member of the Canton Police Division on the time of O’Keefe’s loss of life.
Protection legal professional Alan Jackson questioned Dever on initially telling the feds that she noticed Brian Higgins and then-Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz enter the police division storage and spend a “wildly long time” with Learn’s SUV.
This could give credence to the protection’s idea that police meddled with the proof, together with the busted taillight whose items have been later discovered on the crime scene. Dever later recanted the assertion as a “false memory” after being proven a timeline of occasions that proved that it wasn’t doable.
Prado referred to as Dever not plausible in any respect.
“It was uncomfortable to watch her behavior because she is an officer after all, and she is among us, and she carries a gun,” Prado mentioned of Dever. “She was not reliable and scary, knowing that she’s around holding a weapon.”
Juror defends assaults
Since her first interview with impartial journalist Jessica Machado on Thursday, Prado has been the topic of accusations from web trolls. She addressed them throughout her interview on the Howie Carr Present.
“They are all saying, ‘How come she is an attorney and she was picked for the jury? She’s a liar!” No, I’m not an legal professional within the US, I’m an legal professional in Brazil, by no means labored right here, not licensed right here,” Prado mentioned. “And ‘How come she loves true crime, but she didn’t know about the case?’ Because all of my interests was Brazilian cases from my country. My social media account is in Portuguese.”
“I really didn’t know about the case,” she added. “I thought Turtleboy (journalist Aidan Kearney) was an environmental problem, Karen Read was just a lady.”
The stay-at-home mom to 4 younger youngsters referred to as the facility given to her to resolve Learn’s destiny a “great, huge responsibility” that she was “happy to be part of it and be able to serve justice.”
“I am really happy that I am confident that Karen Read isn’t going to jail, she’s not going to pay for something she didn’t do. This filled me with joy,” Prado mentioned, “and filled me with anger the fact that we don’t know what happened with John O’Keefe.”
Boston Herald file picture
Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. (BDNews.com picture)
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