Karen Read case doomed by sloppy investigation and overcharge, experts say
The murder charge was always a reach, said Suffolk Law professor Christina Miller, a former Suffolk assistant district attorney, but that's sometimes a prosecutorial strategy. Some prosecutors believe that juries like to 'split the baby' and come to a middle point, she said, so they often bring the highest charges possible.
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'Personally, I am of the position that you have more credibility if you charge the counts you have the strongest evidence for,' she said.
And here, across the law-enforcement team, credibility was the downfall, she said – mostly regarding the troubled police investigation that saw local police collecting blood in Solo cups and the lead state police investigator writing crude and profane texts to his friends about Read.
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When bringing a case, she said, prosecutors consider both whether there's a sufficient amount of evidence, and whether that evidence – and the people handling it – is credible.
'There was sufficient credible evidence to prove manslaughter, but the issue was there are so many other credibility problems,' Miller said.
Thomas Merrigan, a defense attorney and retired district court judge, said the prosecution hamstrung itself with the murder charge. It was a clear case of over-charging beyond what the evidence could prove, he said.
'It likely had the effect of polarizing everybody,' he said.
The defense also effectively used its expert witnesses to create doubt in the prosecution's physical evidence, according to Merrigan. Extensive, contradictory testimony about the movement of Read's Lexus SUV and whether the damage to her tail light was consistent with hitting O'Keefe made proving the case extremely difficult, Merrigan said.
'If the fact finder cannot tell what happened, they failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,' he said.
Prosecutors had alleged Read drunkenly and intentionally backed her SUV into O'Keefe and left him for dead outside Boston police Officer Brian Albert's home during a blizzard after a night of bar-hopping in January 2022. The prosecution says the couple's relationship was falling apart amid allegations he was cheating. Multiple first responders testified last week that Read, at the scene where O'Keefe's body was found, made statements suggesting she hit O'Keefe.
Her lawyers say she was framed and that O'Keefe entered the home where he was fatally beaten and possibly mauled by Albert's German shepherd, Chloe, before his body was dumped on the front lawn.
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From the start, the case was marred by poor evidence handling and unprofessionalism by some of the investigator, experts said. State Trooper Michael Proctor, one of the Commonwealth's key witnesses in the first trial, send
In April, an
During the retrial, jurors heard testimony from emergency responders and a civilian witness,
Read's lawyers said the testimony was false and that one of the first responders,
There were also disputes over the case's forensic evidence. Jurors heard testimony from forensic experts regarding a Google search on McCabe's phone for 'hos [sic] long to die in cold,' which was time stamped at 2:27 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, nearly two hours after Read allegedly hit O'Keefe with her SUV. Read's defenders argued that the search demonstrated McCabe knew of O'Keefe's condition before his body was found the next morning.
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But McCabe testified that she twice attempted in frigid weather at the crime scene to Google the information at Read's request, and digital forensic experts Ian Whiffin and Jessica Hyde told jurors they believe the time stamp was inaccurate, instead indicating when McCabe first opened the browser tab that was later used to make the search around 6:30 a.m.
The defense and prosecution also sparred over O'Keefe's cause of death. Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, the former chief medical examiner in Rhode Island, testified that O'Keefe's injuries, including a skull fracture, abrasions on his right arm, swelling to his eyes, cuts over his right eye and to his nose, and bruises on his hand and right knee, weren't consistent with a vehicle strike. But Judson Welcher, a biomechanical engineer who testified for the prosecution, told jurors the abrasions on O'Keefe's right arm were consistent with the geography of the shattered tail light on Read's vehicle.
Shira Diner, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a Boston University law professor, said the defense did a good job of punching holes in the case, but that doesn't mean the prosecutors erred in bringing it. She said not guilty verdicts uphold the integrity and fairness of the legal system.
'I don't think it was in any way a waste of time,' said Shira Diner, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a Boston University law professor. 'I think it's the system doing what it's supposed to do.'
Sean Cotter can be reached at
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