What happens if there's a mistrial in Karen Read case?
DEDHAM - The jury in the Karen Read murder trial resumes its deliberations Monday after resting this weekend and struggling to reach a verdict last week.
Jury remains deadlocked
After 10 weeks, the trial is now in its final phase. Prosecutors said Read hit her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV before leaving him to die in the snow in Canton back in January 2022. Read is charged with second degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene where there has been personal injury and death. She and her defense attorneys claim she's being framed and that his body was dumped in the snow after he was possibly beaten inside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.
The potential jail time and courtroom debate have likely driven a wedge between jurors, who sent a note to the judge on Friday saying they're deadlocked and unable to come to a unanimous decision. Judge Beverly Cannone sent them back to the deliberation room, asking them to keep trying.
What happens next?
"If the jury still cannot reach a unanimous verdict, then the judge will declare a mistrial," said legal analyst Jennifer Roman. "Which means there will be no guilty or not guilty finding against Karen and she could be tried again. A decision, a verdict, a hung jury, whatever the case may be, will come to us by Monday afternoon, the very latest Tuesday morning."
With only days until July 4, Roman said a retrial could become a reality.
"If Monday comes and the jury reports that they're still stuck, the judge will give them one final instruction that's called the Tuey Rodriguez instruction," said Roman. The instruction is a final push reminding the jury they are the experts.
Roman said it could be several months or even more than a year if the state decides to retry Read in the event of a mistrial. But even then, it could be hard to do in a place where so many minds are made up already.
"If this case has to be retried, we're going back to the same pool of people, the same Norfolk County jury pool and we're again going to have to try to find a subset of people that really know nothing about this case, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult," said Roman.
