Will prosecutors get text messages between Karen Read and her lawyer? An expert weighs in.
Updated on March 25, 2025: Judge Beverly Cannone denied the prosecution's motion requesting messages between Karen Read and her attorney. The original story from March 24, 2025 is below.
Prosecutors in Karen Read's case are asking the court to grant them access to texts, emails, and written communications between Karen Read and her lawyer, David Yannetti, in the days following the death of John O'Keefe.
In a motion filed late last week, special prosecutor Hank Brennan claimed that Read had waived her attorney-client privilege by talking to the media.
Karen Read prosecutors seek texts with attorney
"The communications...are no longer privileged, nor confidential because the defendant chose to widely and publicly disseminate them," Brennan wrote.
Specifically, Brennan referenced an Investigation Discovery documentary released last week in which Read talks on camera about hiring Yannetti on January 29, 2022.
"And then when I hired David Yannetti, I asked him those questions the night of January 29," Read said in the documentary. "'Like David, what if I ran his foot over or clipped him in the knee and he passed out and went to care for himself and he threw up or passed out?' And David said, 'Yeah, then you have some element of culpability.'"
Will judge approve request?
WBZ-TV legal analyst Katherine Loftus said asking for privileged communications between a defendant and her lawyer is a rare move.
"Most of us who are, whether you're in the legal world or not, believe that the sanctity of attorney client privilege should remain that way," she said. "While it's very unusual for a court to even entertain a request like this, it's an interesting legal argument, given that [Read] has spoken so freely about her conversations with a number of different people, including her attorneys."
"Privileges are not absolute," Loftus added. "It doesn't mean that they can never be waived. It doesn't mean that they can never be pierced."
Loftus said the request – which she believes will be denied – shows that Brennan plans to try to show jurors Read's state of mind in the days following John O'Keefe's death.
"I think it shows us that he's going to use everything she says against her, which is the reason that you're advised when you're arrested, that anything you say can and will be used against you," Loftus explained. "And I think a lot of people often think that means just in whether it's a police interrogation or whether it's relative to law enforcement, it's not. It's whether you say it to your neighbor or whether you say it to a reporter [too]."
This issue, among others, will be discussed in a final pretrial hearing on Tuesday.
