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Defense attorneys for Karen Read pointed to Alex Murdaugh’s murder appeal as they urged a Massachusetts judge to dismiss murder charges against their client.
Read stood trial last month in the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, whom she was accused of hitting with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow outside the Canton home of another officer after a night of drinking with friends in 2022.
After two months of testimony at the high-profile trial that attracted a media circus, Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial on July 1 when the jury was unable to come to a unanimous verdict after several days of deliberations.
Prosecutors have said they plan to re-try Read, and a second trial has been tentatively scheduled to begin on January 27.
But Read’s attorneys claim that five jurors have come forward to say the jury unanimously reached a not guilty verdict on the second-degree murder charge and leaving the scene of a deadly accident charge and were deadlocked on the remaining manslaughter charge.
The attorneys, who contend O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home and police covered up the crime, returned to court, along with Read, for a hearing on Friday.
Read’s newest attorney, Martin Weinberg, argued that even though the jury never formally announced a verdict on the two charges they reportedly agreed on, conducting a second trial would be “double jeopardy.”
“There is strong and uncontradicted evidence that the jury reached a unanimous decision, even if it wasn’t formalized,” Weinberg told the judge.
“Don’t make Ms Read be the first person in the history of the commonwealth to face re-prosecution for murder.”
Weinberg told the judge that if statements from the five jurors would not be convincing enough to dismiss the two counts, he suggested a private hearing where members of the first jury could testify anonymously.
He cited the Alex Murdaugh case as an example. Murdaugh, a former prominent South Carolina attorney, was convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife and son. Following his guilty verdict, questions were raised about whether or not Clerk of Court Becky Hill made comments to the jury to influence their decision.
To remedy that situation, a special hearing was held and jurors were questioned about their interactions with Hill. In the end, Justice Jean Toal denied Murdaugh’s motion for a new trial.
However, prosecutor Adam Lally argued against holding a similar hearing. He said that not only was there no precedent, but there were “decades if not centuries” of precedent that the court should not accept the statements by the five jurors as a formal “not guilty” verdict, and the defense was doing “quite a twisting of logic into sort of a pretzel.”
“What counsel is proposing as far as what the court should do is prohibited by the rules, it’s prohibited by the law,” Lally said. “There was no verdict returned by this jury.”
Weinsberg then told the judge: “We’re asking the court not to close the door to this new evidence and really adopt the fiction that the impasse was on all three counts when we now know with strong, corroborated, trustworthy evidence it was not.”
Judge Beverly Cannone did not make a decision but instead said she would take the matter under advisement. She told the court she would issue a ruling on paper at a later date, but did not give any indication of when that would be.
