DEDHAM, Mass. (Court TV) — Prosecutors preparing for Karen Read‘s retrial on murder charges have asked a judge to exclude testimony from a defense expert witness whose opinions, they say, have been “debunked.”
FILE – Karen Read waits for her court case to resume at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., on June 28, 2024. Read returned to court Monday, July 22, for the first time since her murder case ended in a mistrial. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, Pool, File)
Read is facing several charges, including second-degree murder, in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. O’Keefe was found dead in the snow following a night out drinking with Read and his friends in January 2022. While prosecutors say Read hit O’Keefe with her car and left him to die in the snow, Read has argued that she is the victim of a wide-ranging coverup. Read’s first trial on the same charges ended with a mistrial in July 2024 when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.
At her first trial, Read’s defense accused Jennifer McCabe of being part of the conspiracy to frame her and pointed to searches done on her phone on the morning that O’Keefe’s body was found. Prosecutors have said the searches —”how long tie die in cikd” or “hos long to die in cold” — were done by McCabe at Read’s request after the body was found. To counter that claim, Read’s defense called Richard Green, who testified that McCabe had made the searches before 6:23 am and that she had attempted to delete them from her phone.
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Richard Green testifies on behalf of Karen Read’s defense on June 21, 2024. (Court TV)
Now prosecutors are asking Judge Beverly Cannone to exclude Green from the second trial, arguing that his “claims lack any evidentiary support and … cannot be made in good faith.” In a motion filed on Dec. 31, prosecutors said that their expert, who works for Cellebrite, can “state with absolute certainty that there is no evidence” of the defense claims. Cellebrite is a company that provides technology that extracts data from cell phones for investigators. “The basis for Mr. Green’s contested opinions has been refuted not only by the Commonwealth’s independent experts,” prosecutors said, “but by Cellebrite itself who (sic) has removed the type of timestamp relied on by Mr. Green from Cellebrite’s Decoding Engine.”
While the jury is considered the finder of fact at trial, prosecutors argue in their motion that allowing Green’s testimony to be heard would only serve to confuse the issue. “Richard Green’s debunked opinions are not an example of a ‘battle of the experts’ best left to be resolved by the factfinder, but instead, an attempt to infect the jury with an inadmissible opinion that is not premised on reliable digital forensics.”
Read, and her attorneys will return to court on Jan. 7 to continue a Daubert hearing that started in December. At issue in that hearing is a separate piece of expert testimony prosecutors are seeking to exclude from the trial, namely the testimony of Dr. Marie Russell, who says that O’Keefe’s injuries were the result of a dog attack rather than being hit by a car.
