Attorneys for the second homicide trial of Karen Learn ended Tuesday with a complete of 12 jurors for the ultimate pool.
After a number of days with a complete of 10 within the pool, attorneys picked up two extra for the entire. On Tuesday they picked three and misplaced one who “was dismissed for personal reasons,” in accordance with Norfolk Superior Court docket Clerk James McDermott.
Learn advised reporters outdoors courtroom that she expects opening arguments in her case to start subsequent Tuesday and that protection legal professional Alan Jackson shall be giving the opening assertion. In final yr’s first trial, legal professional David Yannetti gave the opening whereas Jackson gave the closing argument.
“I’m anxious and it’s in God’s hands, and we’re fighting and working as hard as we can,” Learn advised reporters concerning the trial.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of placing 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 Highway in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
She was tried final yr on fees of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar beneath the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting demise, however that resulted in a mistrial on July 1, 2024, after the jury reported an deadlock by three notes.
Jury choice for her trial started Tuesday of final week and has been expectedly sluggish. The overwhelming majority of potential jurors introduced in each day point out throughout normal questioning that that they had no less than heard of the trial, with a majority of these additionally indicating that that they had fashioned an opinion on the case.
Since Learn’s final trial, the protection has mounted efforts to have fees tossed or the case dismissed outright. Thus far, these efforts have failed earlier than trial Decide Beverly J. Cannone, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court docket, the federal district courtroom in Boston, and the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the First Circuit.
On April 1, the identical day her retrial began, appellate protection legal professional Martin Weinberg filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court docket to think about Learn’s case. He has additionally requested for the Supreme Court docket to subject a keep to the state courts till it has determined whether or not it is going to take up Learn’s case.
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