A mistrial has been declared in the trial of Karen Read, who was charged with second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe.
The mistrial was declared on the fifth day of deliberations. The news came after jurors handed the judge a note saying they were “deeply divided by fundamental differences” in their opinions about a verdict.
A status hearing is set for the week of July 21.
The two-month trial featured dozens of witnesses and drew national attention to the quiet suburbs south of Boston.
Read was accused of hitting O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, with her car and leaving him for dead in the snow in Canton, Massachusetts, on the night of Jan. 29, 2022.
On that snowy night, prosecutors alleged, Read, O’Keefe, Boston police detective Brian Albert, his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe and others left a bar around 12 a.m. and headed to Albert’s home.
Read and O’Keefe left in Read’s black Lexus SUV, and multiple witnesses told authorities they recalled seeing a dark SUV pulling up to Albert’s home around 12:15 a.m., though no one from the car came inside. The witnesses said the vehicle left around 12:45 a.m., according to court documents.
A group including Read and McCabe began searching for O’Keefe around 5 a.m. after Read and O’Keefe’s niece had not been able to contact him, according to court documents.
The group found O’Keefe unresponsive outside of Albert’s home around 6 a.m., and he was pronounced dead later that morning at Good Samaritan Hospital in Boston, according to a criminal complaint obtained by TODAY.com.
Read was charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide and leaving the scene of a deadly crash on Feb. 1, 2022, according to the complaint. Four months later, she was indicted on charges of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of personal injury and death, according to the indictment filed on June 9, 2022, in Norfolk County Superior Court.
Read had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against her, and her attorneys argued in court and in court documents that Read was the victim of a massive coverup between local and state police.
Read’s attorneys alleged in court that O’Keefe’s injuries were not consistent with a vehicle collision, and presented evidence that suggested O’Keefe was severely beaten.
David Yannetti, one of Read’s lawyers, also alleged the lead state police trooper on the case, later identified as Michael Proctor, had a conflict of interest when he did not disclose his relationship with key witnesses, NBC Boston reported.
The Massachusetts State Police said in March it had opened an internal investigation into a “potential violation of department policy” against Proctor, NBC Boston reported, but state police did not indicate whether the investigation was related to a specific case.
Michael DiStefano, Proctor’s attorney, told CNN his client was cooperating with the investigation and hadn’t done anything wrong.
On the stand last month, Proctor was questioned about text messages he sent on his personal cellphone while conducting the investigation into O’Keefe’s death.
Prosecutor Adam Lally asked Proctor to read some of the messages out loud. What he wrote left some jurors quietly gasping and shaking their heads.
In one thread, he texted a state police colleague that he was going through his “r—- client’s phone,” according to NBC Boston.
“No nudes so far,” Proctor added in the message.
On the stand, Proctor said he made a “distasteful joke,” and that he was not looking for nude photos, but “location data text communications … more evidence contained within the phone.”
In a separate group chat with friends he has known since childhood, one of Proctor’s friends asked “is she hot at least,” after Proctor told them about the status of the investigation on the evening of Jan. 29, 2022.
Proctor responded that Read was a “whack-job,” before calling her a vulgar name for a woman.
He also texted a comment about Read’s rear, NBC Boston reported.
When Lally asked Proctor why he would send those messages, Proctor said they were “unprofessional and regrettable comments (that) are something I’m not proud of and I shouldn’t have wrote in private or any type of setting.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts also launched an investigation into Read’s arrest and prosecution last year, though no one has been charged as a result of the investigation.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
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