DEDHAM, Mass. (CN) — The Karen Read murder trial ended Monday when the jury could not reach a verdict following 27 hours of deliberations.
Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial around 2:30 p.m. Monday when jurors sent a note saying, “Consensus is unattainable.” The jury explained: “The deep division is not due to a lack of effort or diligence, but rather a sincere adherence to our individual principles and moral convictions. To continue to deliberate would be futile and only serve to force us to compromise these deeply held beliefs.”
Read, 44, was accused of hitting Boston police officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, with her SUV and leaving him to die in an impending snowstorm on the front lawn of another Boston cop’s home in Canton, Massachusetts.
Read, an equity analyst and professor at Bently University, pleaded not guilty to murder in the second degree, vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision.
Prosecution alleged when Read dropped O’Keefe off at 34 Fairview Road, where he was going to a house party with other cops following a night of barhopping, she was drunk and enraged, and purposely hit him while making a three-point turn before leaving to go back to O’Keefe’s house.
Meanwhile, the defense claimed O’Keefe was beaten at the party, attacked by the homeowner’s dog and dumped outside to die so that his murderers could frame Read by conspiring with investigators and the Norfolk District Attorney’s office, all who had personal relationships with the homeowner or two his brothers, one of which is a Canton police officer and the other, a Canton selectman.
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office released a statement confirming the Commonwealth’s intentions to retry the case.
Alan Jackson, Read’s attorney, spoke outside the court on Monday, saying, “We will not stop fighting. We will have no quit.” Read, who did not comment, stood beside her attorney.
The jury began having trouble reaching a verdict on Friday despite an “exhaustive review of evidence,” as they wrote in a note to the judge, but they were sent back to continue with deliberations. Monday morning, the jury again sent word that they were at an impasse. The judge gave them Tuey-Rodriguez instructions, which highlights that there’s no reason another jury would have an easier time deciding. However, hours later, the jury confirmed they were too “starkly divided” to reach a consensus, bringing an end to the murder trial.
The case is set to be back in court July 22 for a status hearing.
At the center of the murder trial was a convoluted whodunit with numerous contentious pieces of evidence.
First is evidence crucial to determining if O’Keefe ever entered the home on the property where he was found unconscious outside. The defense claimed O’Keefe’s Apple Health Data recorded him taking 80 steps after he exited Read’s Lexus SUV, while the prosecution called the data “unreliable,” noting the same data suggested he took several steps posthumously. The defense said these latter steps were merely “sloppy policing,” and were most likely caused by the phone not being properly collected into evidence.
The credibility of technology was also brought up in relation to the Google search the homeowner’s sister-in-law made for “ho[w] long to die in the cold.” The defense said records show the search was made at 2:27 a.m. Prosecutors, however, explained that the search was made closer to 6 a.m., after O’Keefe’s body was found, adding that it was timestamped incorrectly because it was put into a tab she had opened earlier.
The injuries O’Keefe’s sustained — multiple skull fractures, lacerations on his head, face and right forearm, and bruising on his hands — were also not straightforward. While the medical examiner concluded O’Keefe’s injuries show no signs of him being involved in a physical altercation, an accident reconstructionist hired by federal investigators asserted the injuries were not caused by a motor vehicle collision and an expert witness called the cuts on his arm “consistent with a large dog attack.”
Then, there is the alleged murder weapon: Read’s Lexus SUV. Prosecutors claimed Read cracked her taillight when she backed up to make a three-point turn and rammed into O’Keefe. Pieces of the taillight were collected at the scene, but not until after the police took possession of Read’s vehicle, according to the defense, who presented footage of Read backing into O’Keefe’s car when she left to find him after he never returned home from the party, cracking the taillight.
Other points of contention noted by the defense include the personal relationships between the homeowner and the investigators, the omission of the home as part of a crime scene, and the lead investigator admitting he searched Read’s confiscated phone for nude photographs. There were also errors in the police reports, including the address of the home always being incorrect and the time Read’s car was impounded being pushed forward, so it clocked in after taillight pieces had been found in the same area as O’Keefe, according to the defense.
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