Judge denies motion to dismiss 2 of the charges

The judge presiding over Karen Read’s murder case has denied a defense motion to dismiss two of the three charges Read is facing in the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, including second-degree murder. 

Citing information they received from five jurors, lawyers for the Mansfield woman said the purportedly deadlocked jury in Read’s first trial internally agreed she was not guilty of murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The defense asserted that jurors only reached an impasse on the count of manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, which carried lesser included offenses of involuntary manslaughter and motor vehicle homicide. 

Read is accused of drunkenly and intentionally backing her SUV into O’Keefe, her boyfriend, after a night of bar-hopping in Canton in January 2022. The high-profile case resulted in a mistrial on July 1, and Read’s retrial is slated to begin in January.

While Read’s lawyers argued that retrying her on charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident would violate the rules of double jeopardy, Judge Beverly Cannone disagreed in a memorandum filed Friday in Norfolk Superior Court. 

“This Court recognizes that the bar on retrials following acquittals is ‘[p]erhaps the most fundamental rule in the history of double jeopardy jurisprudence,’” Cannone wrote, citing legal precedent. “However, where there was no acquittal on any of the charges in the defendant’s first trial, there is no risk of subjecting the defendant to double jeopardy by retrial on all charges. Therefore, the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss is denied.”

Read Cannone’s memorandum and order: