Prosecutors have called on the state's highest court to allow them to retry Karen Read for murder in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, arguing against defense claims that jurors had reached a verdict against some of her charges before the judge declared a mistrial.
Read is accused of ramming into John O'Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in January 2022. Read's attorneys argue she is being framed and that other law enforcement officers are responsible for O'Keefe's death. A judge declared a mistrial in June after finding that jurors couldn't reach agreement. A retrial on the same charges is set to begin in January.
In a brief filed late Wednesday to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, prosecutors wrote that there's no basis for dismissing the charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of the accident.
There was "no viable alternative to a mistrial," they argued in the brief, noting that the jury said three times that it was deadlocked before a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors said the "defendant was afforded a meaningful opportunity to be heard on any purported alternative."
"The defendant was not acquitted of any charge because the jury did not return, announce, and affirm any open and public verdicts of acquittal," they wrote. "That requirement is not a mere formalism, ministerial act, or empty technicality. It is a fundamental safeguard that ensures no juror's position is mistaken, misrepresented, or coerced by other jurors."
