It was inevitable that there would still be more questions than answers following the verdict this week in the case against Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the death of her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe. But a couple of things about this convoluted story are unambiguous.
First: O'Keefe's death is a tragedy. Second: The yearslong ordeal—which devolved into a lawyerly circus and electrified many people across the country along the way—is a microcosm of what can happen when metastatic misconduct and zealotry infect the monopoly on power.
The story is, to put it mildly, a bit dizzying. But the basic details are as follows: On an early morning in January 2022, O'Keefe was found dead in the snow outside a house where some of his friends had gathered after a night out drinking. Read had dropped him off a few hours prior, and it had been, by many admissions, an evening dripping with booze. In the following days, law enforcement would coalesce around the idea that Read—intoxicated and angry with O'Keefe—intentionally careened into him with her vehicle, drove away, and left him to die in the freezing cold.
