DEDHAM, Mass. (Court TV) — Tensions ran high at a pretrial hearing for Karen Read after the judge denied her motion to postpone the trial due to a federal appeal.
Karen Read smiles following a brief conversation with blogger Aiden Kearney, also known as Turtleboy, ahead of a March 18, 2025 pretrial hearing. (Pool/Court TV)
Read is charged with the murder of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, whose body was found in the snow outside of a friend’s house after a night of drinking in Jan. 2022. Her first trial, in which her defense claimed she was the victim of a wide-ranging cover-up, ended in a mistrial in July.
Following the mistrial, Read filed an appeal seeking to dismiss the most serious charges she was facing after jurors came forward saying they had been unanimous in wanting to acquit her on those charges. Massachusetts’ highest court denied the appeal, and Read’s attorneys are now pursuing the appeal in federal court.
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On Tuesday, Read’s attorney, Alan Jackson, said Judge Beverly Cannone should postpone the trial, which is currently scheduled to begin on April 1. Jackson warned that a federal decision to dismiss two counts would “send the trial into upheaval.” The motion brought the hearing to an abrupt end after arguments over 11 motions and a ruling from Judge Cannone that found the defense had committed “flagrant violations” of discovery rules when it presented accident reconstruction experts from ARCCA as unbiased and unpaid, despite a July 24, 2024, invoice that the defense paid to them.
In court on Thursday, both Jackson and Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan argued to delay the retrial to the week of April 25, citing Read’s federal appeal, but Judge Cannone refused to endorse the motion. She noted that the jury commissioner had arranged for large numbers of jurors to report on April 1 and that doing that again would take a minimum of ten weeks.
As Read’s attorneys and Brennan battled back and forth on Thursday, both sides began to accuse the other of being untruthful with increasing frequency, prompting Judge Cannone to warn both sides to stop. “We have a lot of ground to cover,” Cannone said. “I suggest we take the personal attacks completely out of this.”
Returning from lunch, Judge Cannone limited each attorney to timed arguments of only two to three minutes, frustrating the defense as they tried to argue against a Commonwealth motion to bar them from using a third-party defense. Asked to make their position clear, Read’s attorney David Yannetti named the three potential third-party culprits as Brian Albert, Colin Albert and Brian Higgins. When asked about potential evidence against the trio, the sides went to an extended sidebar.
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The final motion to be heard ended with a direct challenge from the defense, which is seeking to call an expert to testify to investigative techniques. When asked by the judge and Brennan whether the defense would welcome a rebuttal case with police officers describing a “great investigation,” Jackson responded quickly. “I have two words: Do it. I’d love that. I’d love a shot at that.”
Judge Cannone deferred ruling on the issue and said she would take it, and many others she heard over the course of the two-day hearing, under consideration. The parties will return to court on March 25 to resolve late-filed motions ahead of jury selection on April 1.
