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Massachusetts
Here’s why Karen Read’s lawyers think the murder charge against her should be thrown out
New court filings released this week include new details about why Karen Read‘s lawyers think the murder charge against her should be thrown out.
On Wednesday, Read’s legal team appealed a recent ruling to Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court, seeking to overturn Judge Beverly Cannone’s ruling last month denying Read’s motion to dismiss two of the charges brought against her. They argued that when Cannone declared a mistrial in the case, the jury would have found Read not guilty on two of the three charges brought against her in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
The defense team cited communications from five jurors who reached out after the mistrial and said they were actually deadlocked only on a third count of manslaughter, and that inside the jury room, they had unanimously agreed that Read was innocent of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident.
One juror told them that “no one thought she hit him on purpose,” and another said there was “no consideration for murder 2” and Read “should’ve been acquitted” on that count. They said trying her again on those two charges would amount to double jeopardy.
In Wednesday’s 37-page petition for relief filed with the SJC, Read’s lawyers argue that she is entitled to a review of her motion to dismiss before she is retried. They are also asking the court to hold a hearing allowing oral arguments on the petition.
“The Order, as it currently stands, will result in Ms. Read being retried on January 27, 2025, for the same two alleged crimes, including second-degree murder, that a jury of her peers has already unanimously agreed the Commonwealth failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt following trial,” the motion reads. “Because the jury reached a final, unanimous decision to acquit Ms. Read on those charges, and because there was no manifest necessity supporting the declaration of a mistrial with respect to charges on which the jury unanimously agreed, retrial on such counts would violate the Double Jeopardy protections of both the federal and state constitutions and the common law decisions of this Court enforcing the protections of Double Jeopardy.”
Read the full court filing below:
The filing says Read’s lawyers hearing from jurors in the case the day after the mistrial was declared, “indicating in no uncertain terms that the jury had a firm and unwavering 12-0 agreement that Ms. Read is not guilty of two of the three charges against here, including the charge of murder in the second degree.” And they said neither the prosecutors or the judge disputed the “factual basis” for Read’s motion to dismiss.
“Given the central importance that acquittals have held in our criminal justice system for hundreds of years, the defense respectfully submits that the jury’s unanimous agreement precludes re-prosecution of Ms. Read on Counts 1 and 3 and mandates dismissal of those charges,” Read’s lawyers said.
They also argued that while a jury deadlock supports a mistrial, “there is no authority for the proposition that disagreement to some counts constitutes manifest necessity for the declaration of a mistrial with respect to all counts.”
“Put another way,” Read’s lawyers wrote, “there was no deadlock as to two of the counts on which the trial court declared a mistrial. The trial court’s finding that Ms. Read’s counsel consented to the mistrial is contrary to both the factual record and the clear binding caselaw placing the burden of establishing manifest necessity solely and exclusively on the prosecution.”
They said before a mistrial was declared, the judge should have carefully considered alternatives to a mistrial.
“In rejecting Ms. Read’s claim of acquittal, the court relied solely upon the lack of an ‘open and public verdict affirmed in open court,’” her lawyers said. “This reasoning is rooted in a formalism that has been consistently rejected by the United States Supreme Court and Supreme Judicial Court in a string of precedents spanning more than one hundred years.”
“Indeed, under the trial court’s reasoning, affidavits executed by all 12 jurors attesting to a final, unanimous decision to acquit would not be sufficient to mount a successful Double Jeopardy challenge,” they continued. “Surely, that cannot be the law. Indeed, it must not be the law. And, in the context of this highly publicized case, it strains credulity to suggest that, if the unequivocal statements of five jurors quoted above did not, in fact, represent the unanimous view of all 12, the remaining jurors would allow the inaccuracy to go uncorrected.”
Read, 44, is accused of ramming into O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead during a January 2022 snowstorm. Her two-month trial ended in July when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.
Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense portrayed Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s home and then dragged outside. They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.
Prosecutors have scheduled a new trial for January of 2025.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Steward Health Care collapse the focus of Senate hearing Thursday
The collapse of Steward Health Care‘s hospital system in Massachusetts is expected to be the focus of a Senate hearing Thursday in Washington, D.C.
The hearing, set for 10 a.m., is scheduled to take place even though Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre has said he won’t appear to testify. Senators are expected to hold the executive in contempt if he does defy the subpoena.
Two members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association are expected to testify at the joint hearing hosted by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is examining the impact of the bankruptcy of Steward and management’s decisions on the delivery of patient care.
The hearing will be livestreamed on the committee’s website.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, one of Steward’s most vocal critics, released a report in advance of Thursday’s hearing spotlighting patient and worker experiences, hospital quality data and information on hospital closures in Massachusetts and around the country that he says highlights the company’s mismanagement.
In the report, Markey wrote, “Using hospitals as a get-rich-quick scheme creates a powder keg for the actual provision of care… Steward Health Care – enabled by Cerberus Capital Management and Medical Properties Trust – has preyed on the hospitals on which communities rely. Its malpractice shows in the stunning cost that communities, workers, and patients are now paying for Steward’s greed. Communities are paying with closures of essential health institutions. Workers are paying with their livelihoods. Patients are paying with their lives.”
Even with hospital sales approved for Steward, state health officials say they are bracing for a rocky path ahead and working to stay engaged with the communities that lost facilities.
Beyond the closure of Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration is in the early stages of the eminent domain process to seize St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton and is handling uncertainty surrounding Norwood Hospital, a Steward facility not involved in the bankruptcy proceedings, Department of Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein said Wednesday.
“I’m sure that there will be additional bumps in the road, even as we move closer and closer toward the resolution of this very difficult situation,” Goldstein said during a Public Health Council meeting, without offering specific examples. “I have confidence in the incredible team that I’ve had the privilege to work with during the many months we’ve been dealing with these issues. But I know that whatever situation may arise, we have the system, the people, the expertise and the determination to manage them.”
Dr. Gregg Meyer, who has led the state’s incident command for the Steward upheaval, said the ongoing situation “remains VUCA.”
“Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous,” the Mass General Brigham executive said. “It is actually the perfect setting for public health preparedness and emergency preparedness to be put into place to keep things safe.”
The state did not intervene to halt the closure of the Carney in Dorchester or Nashoba Valley in Ayer, which Healey has attributed to the hospitals not receiving qualified bids from new operators. The Healey administration previously said an ambulance would be on-site 24/7 at both Carney and Nashoba for one week after the hospitals shuttered at the end of August to triage and transport patients seeking emergency care.
In Dorchester, that ambulance service has been extended an extra week, to Saturday morning, as patients continue to learn about Carney’s closure, a DPH spokesperson said. Since Aug. 31, 30 patients who tried to receive care at the Carney have been transported to other hospitals. Ambulance service was not extended in Ayer due to “low volume,” the spokesperson said.
Meyer said officials are launching a “number of efforts” in the coming weeks to stay engaged in the Nashoba and Carney areas, plus in the Merrimack Valley, where two Steward hospital facilities are headed for new ownership. Meyer said the programs and policies will aim to help address ripple effects from the Steward bankruptcy.
“Never waste a crisis,” he said. “And in this case, this provides an opportunity — one that we didn’t ask for but one that’s upon us — to actually rethink and reimagine care in the communities that are impacted. And so we are looking forward to creating a better health system coming out of all this and a brighter future for those communities and patients, as well as the providers in those areas to be able to practice medicine the way that we’ve always hoped for and ensure public health despite all the challenges we face.”
Goldstein said health officials are also focused on ensuring care is provided to residents around Norwood Hospital, which closed in 2020 after major flooding. Construction on a new hospital began in late 2021 but was stopped earlier this year.
“Norwood Hospital continues to operate several outpatient facilities, including care for people with cancer and those requiring rehab services,” Goldstein said. “We are working hard to keep those facilities and those programs operational to prevent disruption of care to patients and to support the community.”
State regulators, including at DPH and the Health Policy Commission, still need to vet the sales of the six Steward hospitals approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Lopez. Under ordinary circumstances, that process could take months, though DPH this summer already sped through the essential service closure process after Steward bucked the 120-day state notice requirement.
State House News Service contributed to this report.
