Crime
With only a few witnesses remaining, Read’s lawyers say they could rest their case as early as Monday.
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
Karen Read’s lawyers are back in the spotlight Monday as the defense continues to make its case to jurors.
Read, 44, is accused of backing her Lexus SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, outside a home in Canton in January 2022. Prosecutors allege she was driving drunk and struck O’Keefe intentionally while dropping him off at a house party. However, lawyers for the Mansfield woman say she was framed in a widespread coverup among witnesses and law enforcement.
The prosecution rested its case Friday, and Read’s lawyers called their first three witnesses: A snowplow driver and experts on dog bites and digital forensics. Outside the courthouse Friday, defense attorney Alan Jackson told WBZ the defense could rest its case as early as Monday.
“I think we’re going to be done on Monday,” Jackson said, according to the news outlet. “I think closing [arguments] on Tuesday. And then we’ll charge the jurors. They will have it maybe end of the day Tuesday.”
According to WBZ, the defense still plans to call two crash reconstructionists and a medical examiner to the stand.
On Friday, jurors heard testimony from snowplow driver Brian Loughran, who said he didn’t see anything outside 34 Fairview Road when he initially drove by around 2:45 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022. O’Keefe’s body was found on the home’s front lawn just hours later.
Loughran also testified that he saw nothing outside 34 Fairview Road when he passed by a second time that morning. Answering a question from defense attorney David Yannetti, he specifically denied seeing a body on the lawn.
Read’s lawyers have suggested that O’Keefe walked into 34 Fairview Road sometime after midnight on the 29th and was beaten, attacked by the family’s dog, and dumped outside in the snow.
Defense expert Dr. Marie Russell — a retired emergency room physician and forensic pathologist — testified Friday that the wounds on O’Keefe’s right arm “were sustained by an animal, possibly a large dog, because of the pattern of the injuries.”
Russell has authored or co-authored several peer-reviewed papers on law enforcement dog bites.
Another key piece of evidence in the defense team’s coverup theory is a Google search witness Jennifer McCabe made for “hos long to die in cold.” While two digital forensics experts have testified that McCabe made the search shortly after 6:20 a.m. on the 29th — after O’Keefe was found in the snow — defense expert Richard Green said the search actually occurred hours earlier, at 2:27 a.m.
Green testified that the search “happened at or before 2:27 a.m.” and “was in a deleted state” when he parsed through data from McCabe’s phone. Two other digital forensics experts, Jessica Hyde and Ian Whiffin, previously testified that the 2:27 a.m. timestamp actually indicates when McCabe first opened the browser tab.
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