DEDHAM, Mass. (Court TV) — Hours of back-and-forth and fingerpointing in court ended with no clear resolution and left Karen Read and her defense in limbo as they fight back against allegations of hiding information.
Karen Read smiles in court during a pretrial hearing on Feb. 25, 2025. (Court TV)
Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly ended a motions hearing on Feb. 18, telling the attorneys that she had just been provided with information that caused her “grave concern.” Taking the bench on Feb. 25, Judge Cannone immediately explained her reasoning, saying that she was alarmed to hear of a previously undisclosed relationship between Read’s attorneys and expert witnesses in her first trial.
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Read’s first trial on charges she killed her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, by hitting him with her car and leaving him to die in the snow, ended in a mistrial when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. Read’s defense has maintained she is innocent and the victim of a wide-ranging cover-up.
At the first trial, Read’s defense team had two accident reconstruction experts, initially hired by federal investigators, testify on her behalf. Midway through the trial, Read’s defense, led by Alan Jackson and David Yanetti, told Judge Cannone that they had no contact with the experts before their testimony. But on Feb. 18, Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan revealed documents that showed several messages between Jackson and the experts about what they would and would not testify to and an invoice for $23,000.
Robert Alessi, the most recent addition to Read’s defense following her first trial, represented the team as a whole in addressing the issues at Tuesday’s hearing. According to Alessi’s account, the sole contact with the experts was through Jackson and was limited to coordinating testimony.
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“This is one of the most unusual situations I’ve seen in my practice of law: you have these experts, you have great exculpatory information, but there’s significant restraints in how you can use the information,” Alessi told Cannone. The issue with the expert witnesses in this case, Alessi explained, was that they had been hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Office pursuant to a federal investigation but had contributed reports that were exculpatory to the defense. Alessi emphasized that regardless of any communications between Read’s team and the witnesses, the reports were written well before the trial and no information within them was ever changed.
When it came to explaining the $23,000 invoice, Alessi said the defense team was shocked to receive it. “It came out of the blue! It came out of the blue!” Alessi exclaimed in court. “It gets sent to Mr. Jackson’s office in July. I can’t reveal attorney-client communications, but I can tell you there was one person that was more shocked than most about the invoice coming in and the amount.” Alessi emphasized that the invoice was dated July 12, which was one month after Read’s first trial ended in a mistrial.
Alessi confirmed that Read paid the invoice after Jackson consulted with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to confirm that paying the experts was legal and appropriate. That was news to Brennan, who said, “It wasn’t until your honor asked today that we even knew the defense paid this bill.”
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After Alessi’s presentation, Judge Cannone addressed Yanetti, Jackson and Read’s attorney Elizabeth Little in turn to ask whether they disputed, and they each indicated that Alessi’s version of facts was correct.
Brennan fired back at Alessi, claiming that the defense has repeatedly violated the court’s rules, calling minor violations “a raindrop in a hurricane,” and emphasized that his intention is not to preclude the experts from testifying but rather to get the discovery evidence to which he is legally entitled. Brennan characterized the defense’s relationship wth the U.S. Attorney’s Office as “murky” and said the “enormous gaps in time” between emails suggest that there is an “unclear history of interaction” between the defense and its witnesses.
Judge Cannone adjourned after 4 pm, and said that the parties would reconvene to continue the hearing on Tuesday, March 4, and said that it could extend from there, if necessary.
