Karen Learn’s protection workforce stays dedicated to having two of the fees in opposition to their consumer dropped within the new trial following alleged revelations from jurors indicating they have been unanimous in acquittal on these fees.
Prosecutors filed an opposition to the movement to acquit final week, writing that “The defendant’s unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim that the ‘jury reached a unanimous decision to acquit’ lacks any merit or legal foundation.”
Protection attorneys have fired again of their newest submitting to help their movement to dismiss the fees of second-degree homicide and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting loss of life.
“(W)hether the jury acquitted Ms. Read or, alternatively, was merely not deadlocked on the relevant counts, the Constitution compels the same result: dismissal,” protection attorneys wrote after a assessment of case regulation on constitutional protections in opposition to Double Jeopardy.
“Given the unambiguous post-trial evidence, it would simply be wrong to require the defendant to obtain two acquittals from two different juries for the same crime,” the submitting continues. Attorneys of their earlier filings stated that they have been advised by 4 jurors that the jury was unanimous within the choice to acquit on the 2 fees and have been solely held on the manslaughter cost.
The protection attorneys say that the prosecution’s opposition is “perhaps, most notable for what it does not dispute: … the jury had reached a unanimous decision that Ms. Read is not guilty on two of the three charges pending against her.”
Learn, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree homicide, motorcar manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision inflicting loss of life. The fees stemmed from the loss of life of John O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police drive and Learn’s boyfriend of two years, within the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Norfolk Superior Courtroom Decide Beverly Cannone known as a mistrial on July 1, the fifth day of deliberations, throughout which jurors within the nine-week trial despatched three notes indicating they have been at an deadlock. The case is subsequent scheduled for a listening to on July 22, the place this movement will seemingly be argued and a brand new trial date set.
The protection stated that opposite to claims within the opposition, “the defense was provided no opportunity to be heard regarding the declaration of a mis-trial” earlier than it was declared.”
“(T)he jury’s word didn’t ‘explicitly indicate an impasse on all charges,” the attorneys write in the filing. “To the contrary, it was readily susceptible to the interpretation, proven correct based on information received post-trial from deliberating jurors, that the deadlock applied only to the multiple offenses included within Count 2 and not to Counts 1 and 2.”
Jurors were able to consider “lesser included charge” options under the manslaughter indictment: involuntary manslaughter and motor vehicle homicide.
“In essence, the Commonwealth’s opposite place asks this Courtroom to shut its eyes to the potential (and even, as right here, very seemingly) existence of partial unanimous verdicts on some, however not all, individually charged counts to keep away from ‘the risks of juror coercion,” the defense wrote.
Prosecutors in the Friday opposition filing also linked the defense’s request for a Tuey-Rodriguez warning — a mannequin speech a decide offers a jury to spur them into deliberative motion — following the jury’s second deadlock word to that of welcoming the mistrial.
“The Commonwealth responded that the jury had not had sufficient time to deliberate and requested that the jury be instructed to continue their deliberations,” the prosecution’s submitting states. “On the contrary, Attorney David Yannetti argued ‘we believe that there has been sufficient time’ and advocated for the jury to be declared deadlocked and provided the Tuey-Rodriguez instruction.”
The protection says that hyperlink isn’t true.
“The Commonwealth’s attempt to shift blame to the defense overlooks the blackletter rule that the prosecution alone bears the ‘heavy’ burden of establishing manifest necessity for a mistrial,” they write within the newest submitting. “The defense’s request for a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction did not, of course, reflect any implicit concession that the jury was deadlocked on all counts, nor did it commit the defense to any position regarding whether the court should … declare a mistrial.”
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