As jury choice unfolds within the Karen Learn retrial in Dedham her attorneys have taken their efforts to overturn the homicide cost all the best way to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of putting John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police officer, along with her automobile and leaving him to die in a serious snowstorm on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Highway in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
She was tried on costs together with second-degree homicide final summer time however that led to mistrial after the jury despatched three notes indicating an deadlock. Jury choice for her second trial started on Tuesday.
The idea
The attorneys for Learn are basing their Supreme Court docket case on a continuation of the 2012’s Blueford v. Arkansas, which in some ways resembles the Learn staff’s personal arguments on why Learn needs to be cleared of the homicide cost in her retrial.
“This case is an ideal vehicle to resolve an issue of fundamental constitutional importance argued to the Court but not decided in Blueford v. Arkansas,” the petition doc states.
In Blueford, a defendant was charged with homicide in Arkansas. Throughout deliberations, the jury indicated to the choose that it was able to acquit the defendant on costs of capital homicide and first-degree homicide, however was unsure on manslaughter and hadn’t voted on a fourth cost. The choose ordered the jury again to deliberations however the jury may nonetheless not return a full verdict. The choose declared a mistrial.
Each the Supreme Court docket of Arkansas and, subsequently, the U.S. Supreme Court docket discovered that the trial choose’s mistrial choice was right and the mid-deliberation discover of not responsible on the 2 costs didn’t represent an actual verdict, thus the defendant may very well be retried on all costs.
“The Double Jeopardy Clause protects against being tried twice for the same offense. The Clause does not, however, bar a second trial if the first ended in a mistrial,” Supreme Court docket Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in abstract of the case. “All agree that the defendant may be retried on charges of manslaughter and negligent homicide. The question is whether he may also be retried on charges of capital and first-degree murder.”
The way it relates
Learn’s attorneys inside every week of final summer time’s mistrial declared that a number of jurors spoke out to say {that a} comparable state of affairs had occurred throughout deliberations in Learn’s case.
The protection staff says that jurors informed them that the jury was unanimous in “not guilty” votes for the homicide and leaving the scene costs and was solely held on the manslaughter cost. The jurors stated they didn’t know they might return a partial verdict.
This revelation, Learn’s staff argues, signifies that Learn needs to be thought-about not responsible for homicide and that to retry her on that cost and the leaving the scene costs could be a violation of her Double Jeopardy rights.
The argument has not been profitable up to now.
The argument failed with trial Choose Beverly Cannone, who can even preside over the retrial; the Supreme Judicial Court docket, which upheld Cannone’s ruling; and U.S. District Court docket Choose F. Dennis Saylor IV, who in a nuanced opinion concluded that the argument didn’t rise to the extent of the federal courts interjecting into state courts.
The protection then appealed to the federal First Circuit Court docket of Appeals, which dominated final week to uphold Saylor’s ruling.
The petition
Now comes the petition to the Supreme Court docket, wherein Learn’s attorneys say the courtroom can resolve points left over in Blueford.
“The jury’s not guilty verdicts were not announced because the trial court, believing but not confirming that the impasse reported in a series of three juror notes applied to all, rather than only some, counts, never inquired regarding the scope of the deadlock and the jurors failed to volunteer to the trial court that their impasse was limited to one of the three counts rather than all,” the petition filed Tuesday states.
The petition argues that the First Circuit’s conclusions within the Learn attraction “runs contrary to this Court’s repeated emphasis, over more than a century, that what constitutes an acquittal for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause is controlled by substance, not form.”
“In sum,” the petition states later, “the defense learned post-trial that the jury reached a verdict that was not announced. It was at least entitled to the opportunity to substantiate that fact in order to ensure Read is not unconstitutionally forced to stand trial for criminal offenses, including murder, of which she has already been acquitted.
“Such inquiry in no way intrudes on the deliberative process of the jury,” the petition continues. “Such an inquiry instead honors the jury service which the trial court described as ‘extraordinary’ rather than rendering irrelevant the efforts of at least four jurors to disclose that there was not an impasse on all three counts, as contrasted to only one count.”
