Norfolk District Lawyer Michael Morrissey stays on the new seat as Karen Learn’s protection workforce argues he has used his private cellphone and e mail to speak with the court docket and witnesses within the case.
Protection lawyer David Yannetti has mentioned he realized that Morrissey’s textual content messages are “somehow remarkably set to auto-delete after 30 days,” sparking concern about what the DA could also be hiding.
“That obviously raises some questions for us, maybe the subject of a future motion, but more immediately, the concern is that every day that passes we’re losing text messages from 30 days prior,” Yannetti mentioned on the finish of a listening to at Norfolk Superior Courtroom final week.
Learn’s protection workforce filed a movement in early November to look into Morrissey’s private e mail and cellphone for any reference to their consumer’s case, saying they’ve proof he’s made improper communications.
Yannetti expanded on the request final Tuesday, detailing how they’d like to look Morrissey’s private iCloud e mail for references of “Read” and “Reed,” names of related witnesses, all judges who’ve sat on the case and clerk’s workplace workers at Stoughton District Courtroom and Norfolk Superior Courtroom.
“We don’t know if he did that for the purpose of avoiding a FOIA request or if he just misspelled my client’s name,” Yannetti mentioned of Morrissey spelling his consumer’s final identify “Reed.”
“We have reason not to trust Mr. Morrissey in the light of his actions using this personal email account to make an ex parte communication,” Yannetti added, “and we ask that a more thorough search be done for these types of communications.”
The protection has taken exception to how Morrissey communicated ex parte with personnel and judges at Stoughton District Courtroom, based on “documentary evidence.”
Morrissey’s private cellphone and e mail use sprung into the highlight amid the witness intimidation case involving Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney.
The Holden-based journalist has extensively coated the Learn case on his blogs and social media accounts from an intensely pro-Learn perspective, and he has been charged with intimidating witnesses in Learn’s case for her profit.
Learn’s protection workforce requested entry to Morrissey’s private cellphone and e mail after Kearney’s lawyer Mark Bederow filed an analogous movement in October.
Bederow claimed Morrissey used his private e mail handle to chastise Stoughton District Courtroom for “leaking” details about a public continuing towards Kearney to the defendant and that his communications included screenshots of textual content messages from a pro-prosecution witness in Learn’s case, in addition to different info indicating multiple witness was in communication with the DA’s workplace.
Public officers’ use of personal emails for presidency enterprise is taken into account a violation of state regulation.
In a weblog put up on Nov. 19, Kearney highlighted how his protection workforce filed one other movement in Norfolk Superior Courtroom asking particularly for “access to Morrissey’s private email account that he used to communicate with judges ex parte about Turtleboy’s activism on September 29, 2023.”
“It’s clear from the postings that Stoughton Court is directly involved in this dissemination of information affecting our murder prosecution,” Morrissey wrote in an e mail that day to Stacey Fortes, chief justice of the Massachusetts District Courtroom. Kearney included a screenshot of the communication in his put up.
“From the comments from one of the witnesses, you can see that they have clearly lost all confidence in the Courts of the Commonwealth,” Morrissey continued. “I have to agree that the actions erode the trust and integrity between the courts and the public and the relationship with the District Attorney’s Office.”
On Friday, Kearney posted on his X account that the court docket “withheld ‘embarrassing’ emails. (Morrissey) used this account regularly to email dozens of judges about court business. He even mocked the trial courts and their efficiency in one email.”
Additionally Friday, Norfolk Superior Courtroom Choose Beverly Cannone, overseeing the Learn homicide case, denied the prosecution’s request for her dad and mom’ cellphone data, which they mentioned may have bolstered their argument that the defendant knew she struck and left John O’Keefe to die in a snowstorm.
Learn, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree homicide, motorcar manslaughter whereas working below the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting loss of life within the killing of her boyfriend of roughly two years, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, within the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Prosecutors say that she struck O’Keefe together with her SUV after one more drunken bout of combating within the troubled relationship, and left him to freeze and die on the entrance yard of a Canton house the place the pair was presupposed to proceed an evening out after the bars closed.
The protection counters that O’Keefe made it inside that house and was killed by others inside, together with presumably then-homeowner Brian Albert, who was a fellow Boston Police officer. It alleges the well-connected police household then labored with native and state police investigators to cowl up the crime and body Learn.
Learn’s first trial ended with a hung jury in July. The protection and prosecution have requested the retrial, scheduled for late January, be pushed again to April.
Morrissey has obtained backlash after he blasted web trolls in an August 2023 video for spreading “baseless” theories within the case.
“The harassment of witnesses in the murder prosecution of Karen Read is absolutely baseless,” the DA mentioned within the video, which he described as “the first statement of its kind” in his tenure. “It should be an outrage to any decent person — and it needs to stop. Innuendo is not evidence. False narratives are not evidence.”
“However, what evidence does show is that John O’Keefe never entered the home at 34 Fairview Road in Canton on the night he died,” he added. “Location data from his phone — recovered from the lawn beneath his body when he was transported to the hospital — shows that his phone did not enter that home.”
Morrissey is up for reelection in 2026 and faces two candidates who’ve already vowed to run for the place.
