What to know earlier than Karen Learn’s second homicide trial

Karen Learn will face a second trial starting Tuesday in any case her makes an attempt to throw the costs out have failed.

Right here’s what you want to know earlier than all of it begins. The Herald additionally has a information to who’s who within the retrial.

Learn, 45, is accused of putting John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police officer, along with her automotive and leaving him to die in a serious snowstorm on the entrance garden of 34 Fairview Street in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.

She was tried final 12 months on expenses of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle below the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting dying, however that resulted in mistrial on July 1, 2024, after the jury reached an deadlock.

Efforts to dismiss

Learn’s protection group, nonetheless, quickly argued that the jury was not hung, as 5 of them had surfaced to say that the jury was able to acquit on each the homicide and leaving the scene expenses and was solely in disagreement over manslaughter. This, the protection argues, implies that to attempt Learn once more on something apart from the manslaughter cost would violate Learn’s constitutional Double Jeopardy safety rights.

To date, the courts have disagreed. The argument failed with trial Decide Beverly Cannone, who may also preside over the retrial; the Supreme Judicial Courtroom, which upheld Cannone’s ruling; and U.S. District Courtroom Decide F. Dennis Saylor IV, who in a nuanced opinion got here to the conclusion 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 Courtroom of Appeals, which dominated Thursday to uphold Saylor’s ruling.

Cannone additionally denied a separate protection effort to dismiss for “extraordinary governmental misconduct.”

The search for a jury

The retrial begins with the beginning of empanelment for a jury.

“The lawyers should get comfortable for the long haul because this is going to take a while,” retired Superior Courtroom Decide Jack Lu instructed the Herald about his predictions for jury choice.

The “unprecedented pretrial publicity,” as prosecutor Laura McLaughlin known as it in a latest listening to, might make seating an neutral jury an onerous job.

A trial courtroom spokeswoman stated 275 potential jurors will likely be known as every day of the primary week, with that dropping a bit to 243 a day thereafter. Forward of the primary trial, roughly 90 potential jurors confirmed as much as courtroom every day over 5 days earlier than a jury was seated.

Boston-area protection legal professional William Kickham instructed the Herald that seating a jury will likely be “quite challenging to say the least,” spurred on by social media and web journalism that creates a a lot totally different atmosphere than years in the past.

“Now, information travels at the speed of light, and almost simultaneously across multiple social media and a variety of internet sources,” Kickham wrote in an e mail.

“The pretrial publicity, combined with the new documentary series, is going to make empaneling a jury that has no knowledge, bias, or opinions about this case complex at best. This case … could easily rival Sacco & Vanzetti and the Boston Strangler cases, in terms of widespread recognition,” Kickham continued.

Lu stated he thinks the impediment to seating a jury isn’t the publicity and the opinions nonetheless festering, however the anticipated size of the trial. He stated whereas he appreciates firms like Verizon that pay their staff who’re jurors their regular charges, that’s hardly ever the case, and a multi-week dedication to the trial is a burden a number of working folks can’t bear.

Lu and Suffolk College Regulation College Scientific Professor of Regulation Christopher Dearborn agreed that it’s unrealistic to count on jurors to know nothing concerning the case.

“The goal is not to seat a jury that knows nothing about the case — a virtual impossibility given the breadth of the media coverage — but rather a jury that the judge is convinced can set aside any prior knowledge of the case and still be impartial,” Dearborn instructed the Herald in an emailed response.

He stated that whereas “Read’s team has a legitimate concern about their ability to receive a fair trial in Norfolk County,” latest circumstances present it may be completed.

“You don’t have to go very far geographically or very far back in time to find instructive analogs,” he added, saying that the James “Whitey” Bulger mob trial and that of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “were both cases that had extraordinary levels of regional and national prominence, raising similar concerns, but after a lengthy and exhaustive process, a jury was seated in both cases.”

Flurry of authorized exercise

Whereas the protection group’s multi-pronged efforts to have the case thrown out made up for an enormous variety of pre-trial publicity — it wasn’t every part.

“Both sides have filed too many motions,” Lu stated.

Kickham stated that “both sides are doing what they are professionally obligated to do: secure the best legal footing they can … through exclusions of evidence and expert witnesses — which this case leans very heavily to.”

Whereas Lu believes {that a} bulk of the protection motions and challenges are in all probability to “protect the record” for additional appeals down the street, they nonetheless reveal a number of technique. Different consultants agreed.

“Any tactical advantages for either side that existed from their adversary not knowing everything that was coming has been almost completely eliminated as virtually their entire playbooks have been revealed,” Dearborn stated.

Lu stated that the brand new lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan, difficult so most of the protection consultants allowed him to get transcripts, “but exposed details of his theory of the case so that they can prepare.”

“I would have suggested that Mr. Brennan, a longtime defense lawyer, lay low, and use his defense-honed tactics to overwhelm the defense at trial, rather than by pretrial motion,” Lu added.

All three consultants the Herald spoke with stated that variously, statistics, expertise, and “conventional wisdom” say a retrial favors the prosecution. Lu stated he provides the prosecution “a whisker of an edge.”

“Given the straightforward and very linear nature of the Commonwealth’s case the first time around and the more creative and nuanced attack by the defense, I think that reality, in this instance, favors the Commonwealth,” Dearborn stated.

Competing theories

The primary trial provided jurors two utterly totally different variations of occasions.

The prosecution’s view was that Learn, maybe 9 drinks deep, acquired into yet one more struggle with O’Keefe of their fraught relationship simply earlier than O’Keefe exited her SUV to go to an afterparty on the Albert residence at 34 Fairview Street. She started a three-point flip, prosecutor Adam Lally argued, after which slammed the automobile in reverse, putting O’Keefe and spinning his physique round the place he lay to relaxation on the frozen garden the place he would freeze and die.

The protection countered the bodily and social proof of that principle, as anticipated, however stated that not solely does the proof not present Learn struck O’Keefe along with her automobile however that the proof means that another person — or a number of different folks — killed O’Keefe after which engaged in a conspiracy with native and state police to make Learn the patsy.

Below Brennan, the prosecution’s principle seems to stay intact for the second trial, however he has proven that he could also be taking a unique method. For one, he introduced in a pretrial listening to that he doesn’t intend to convey up the journey Learn and O’Keefe took to Aruba simply weeks earlier than O’Keefe would die.

That journey was a centerpiece of Lally’s presentation that the connection between Learn and O’Keefe was splintering. On that journey, Learn accused Marietta “Etta” Sullivan of “making out” with O’Keefe and it led to a blow-up the place yelling and swearing have been exchanged between the 2 ladies.

Yannetti named three folks whom he stated had motive and alternative to kill O’Keefe: Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and Colin Albert. There’s additionally Brian Albert’s canine, Chloe, who the protection has stated might have contributed to scratches and puncture wounds to O’Keefe’s arm.

Neither story utterly satisfied the jurors, who returned a number of notes indicating a impasse. Upon the third word, Decide Cannone declared a mistrial.

If the protection’s argument that the jury was really able to acquit on all however the manslaughter cost is true, Lu stated that also wouldn’t be a win if that occurs in trial two: “Conviction of any charge is a loss to the defense in this case.”

Dearborn stated that the conclusion suggests “both sides should consider simplifying and streamlining their cases considerably.”

“The message from that first jury seemed clear to me: ‘We don’t believe Karen Read should be found guilty of the most serious charges because we had clear disagreement about her intent,’” Dearborn stated. “‘However, we believe she did hit John O’Keefe with the car.’”

“Oversimplified, that jury did not seem to be swayed by the defense theory about a 3rd party culprit, but rather they were trying to decide if it was accidental or not,” he stated.

The proof and figures

Given the extensive hole between the 2 theories on what occurred, there’s a wider than traditional quantity of proof for the jury to have a look at: each the proof for or towards a automobile strike and the identical for the third-party killer concept.

The protection’s principle of a conspiracy relies on the when a Google seek for “hos long to die in cold” from Jennifer McCabe, home-owner Brian Albert’s sister-in-law, was carried out. The protection skilled says that she made the search at round 2:30 a.m. the day O’Keefe died. If she did, then that may point out data that one thing unhealthy had occurred to O’Keefe hours earlier than his physique was found.

The prosecution, and McCabe herself, says that she really made that search within the 6 a.m. hour, on the request of Learn, after the 2 ladies and a 3rd, Kerry Roberts, discovered O’Keefe’s physique within the heavy falling snow.

Whether or not the jury buys the conspiracy will hinge on whether or not it trusts the protection or prosecution’s pc forensics consultants.

“Armed with hindsight, time, and transcripts, both sides should be even more (effective) in blunting the impact of their adversaries’ experts the second time around,” Dearborn stated.

The prosecution’s case will relaxation on the state of Learn’s SUV’s taillight and when it shattered. Within the days following O’Keefe’s dying, taillight items have been found within the space the place O’Keefe’s physique was discovered on the garden. Surveillance footage from round Canton will recommend that Learn’s taillight was intact till the drop-off after which was shattered. A State Police trooper may also testify that Learn’s automobile’s system tracked a sudden backward acceleration on the time the prosecution says O’Keefe was hit.

The protection, like final time, has indicated that it’ll problem when Learn’s taillight was shattered. Within the final trial, digital camera footage from O’Keefe’s dwelling confirmed that Learn backed into O’Keefe’s parked automotive when she left to go to seek for O’Keefe when he didn’t come dwelling that evening.

The protection says that is what cracked the taillight — and photographs from the Canton Police Division’s sallyport storage, they are saying, will present that the case’s lead investigator was hanging across the taillight, probably messing with the proof.

The lead investigator is Michael Proctor, who was relieved of responsibility hours after the mistrial. He was fired earlier this month. His downfall got here when he was compelled throughout trial to learn textual content messages he despatched to family and friends within the early days of the Learn case that he admitted on the stand have been “inappropriate.”

They included reporting he discovered “No nudes so far” in Learn’s telephone and calling Learn each a “babe” and a “whack job.” He additionally texted his sister that he hopes Learn “kills herself.”

Proctor grew to become a touchstone for many who consider Learn is harmless and that the investigation was flawed. The disgraced Proctor, because the “case officer” within the investigation, is anticipated to take the stand once more within the retrial.