One more decide has informed Karen Learn that she has to struggle the homicide cost within the Norfolk County courtroom.
A U.S. District Court docket decide on Thursday denied the homicide defendant’s federal bid to toss the homicide cost in opposition to her.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar below the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting demise. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years on the time, in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.
Final summer season, Learn’s first trial resulted in a mistrial. Learn’s attorneys have since argued that a number of jurors claimed they had been solely held on the OUI manslaughter cost, and so they had been able to acquit on the homicide cost and the leaving the scene cost.
Learn had lately filed a “writ of habeas corpus” in Massachusetts federal court docket after the state Supreme Judicial Court docket dominated that Learn’s pending retrial on the costs didn’t violate her rights in opposition to double jeopardy.
“The issues presented by the petition are limited to those arising under the federal Constitution — specifically, whether a retrial would constitute double jeopardy in violation of petitioner’s rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments,” F. Dennis Saylor IV, chief decide of Massachusetts U.S. District Court docket, wrote within the ruling on Thursday.
“… The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is DENIED,” Saylor wrote.
Within the federal submitting, Learn had requested the court docket to, “Issue a writ of habeas corpus and rule that Ms. Read’s re-prosecution on Counts 1 and 3 would violate her Double Jeopardy rights.”
“I am claiming that my April 2025 retrial violates my federal Double Jeopardy rights,” Learn wrote within the federal petition.
Learn had filed the petition in opposition to Norfolk County Superior Court docket and the Massachusetts Lawyer Common.
“Re-prosecution is barred because there was no manifest necessity to declare a mistrial on counts on which the jury was not deadlocked,” Learn’s federal petition reads.
“The jury’s unanimous conclusion following trial that Ms. Read is not guilty on Counts 1 and 3 constitutes an acquittal and precludes re-prosecution,” the petition states.
Learn has been arguing that Norfolk Superior Court docket Decide Beverly Cannone improperly declared a mistrial, and claims that she was “actually acquitted” on each counts.
Additionally, she was in search of an order for post-trial voir dire of the jurors to ask in the event that they they did, in reality, vote to acquit her on each counts.
The federal decide, Saylor, in his ruling mentioned there was a “manifest necessity” for the declaration of a mistrial primarily based on jury impasse.
“And the trial court did not abuse its broad discretion in reaching that conclusion,” Saylor added.
As soon as the jury reported a impasse for the third time, Massachusetts regulation prohibited the decide from ordering the jury to proceed deliberations with out their consent, he wrote.
“This Court sees no basis to conclude that the trial judge’s decision to declare a mistrial was incorrect or improper,” the decide wrote.
Additionally, he dominated that the post-trial statements from jurors don’t point out whether or not they really replicate a remaining, conclusive verdict of acquittal by all 12 jurors.
“Any jury vote here was not final,” Saylor added.
He additionally declined to order post-trial voir dire of the person jurors.
“The Court concludes that a federal-court voir dire of the state-court jurors — a voir dire that would necessarily subject their private deliberations to intense public scrutiny — is probably unlawful and certainly ill-advised,” Saylor wrote.
“This is a highly sensationalized prosecution that has been the subject of exceptional public scrutiny, not only locally but nationally,” he added. “For a number of reasons, it has also proved to be unusually divisive. There is a strong likelihood that jurors would be subject to harassment, public pressure, and social coercion were the Court to order a post-trial voir dire that explores their viewpoints and votes at some length.”
Learn can enchantment the ruling.
The retrial is scheduled to begin in Norfolk Superior Court docket on April 1.
Initially Printed:
