Karen Read's motion to dismiss entire case denied
Judge Beverly Cannone has denied Karen Read's motion to dismiss the entire case against her, setting the stage for her second high-profile trial to get underway with jury selection next week in Massachusetts.
Read's defense team filed the motion to dismiss last month, citing reasons of "extraordinary government misconduct." Attorneys made allegations of intentional video manipulation, withholding of critical evidence, not disclosing meetings with witnesses, and jury interference.
Karen Read's motion to dismiss rejected
Cannone rejected the motion on Tuesday, hours after the conclusion of the final pretrial hearing.
"Such a drastic sanction is justified only in a response to the most egregious and truly harmful conduct. In all but the worst cases, the appropriate remedy is at best a new trial, such as the one that is scheduled to begin soon," Cannone wrote. "Because the claimed violations here do not rise to a level that would justify the most draconian sanction of dismission, and because the defendant's constitutional rights can be fully protected in the coming trial, her motion to dismiss is DENIED."
Read is accused of hitting and killing Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow following a night of drinking in 2022. Read and O'Keefe were dating at the time, though according to testimony in her first trial, their relationship had deteriorated.
Read has pleaded not guilty in the case and says she is being framed by several people, including law enforcement. Her first high-profile trial ended with a mistrial due a hung jury.
"Ms. Read has been permanently and irreversibly denied her constitutional right to a fair trial," the defense had argued in its motion to dismiss.
Why was Karen Read asking to dismiss her case?
As part of her motion, Read's attorneys claimed prosecutors "inverted" surveillance video that shows Read's SUV inside the Canton Police Department. They called it a "deliberate attempt to defraud the jury into believing that no one approached or touched the right rear tail light."
Defense attorneys argued that Michael Proctor, the lead investigator in the case who has since been fired by Massachusetts State Police for his conduct handling the Read investigation, manipulated Read's taillight and planted evidence near where O'Keefe's body was found.
The heavily redacted initial motion to dismiss included an allegation of jury tampering. Defense attorneys alleged that Massachusetts State Police Det. John Fanning was in charge of the jury during trial and improperly interfered.
Prosecutors called the allegation that Fanning was in charge of the jury "patently false," saying he was involved in the "safety and peace keeping efforts" near the courthouse.
Dismissed juror from first trial
Cannone got into more details about jury issues in her written decision denying the motion. She included a transcript with a dismissed juror that shows the conversation before the juror's dismissal on the day of closing arguments last June.
Several Dedham police officers reportedly confirmed they heard that a juror had previously been at a local American Legion post talking about the case and "there may be a recording of her doing so." The officers told Fanning, who passed the information along to court security.
At sidebar, Cannone asked what the juror could tell her about the information. "I don't know," the juror replied, saying it had happened about a month prior.
When asked if people mentioned anything about the case, the juror replied "I was drinking. I don't remember."
"All right. Could it have happened?" Cannone asked the juror, who replied, "I don't know."
Cannone said she believed there was "credible evidence" the juror had conversations about the case.
"She did not deny it. I find that there has been violation of the court order for failure to report it on a repeated basis," Cannone said in her decision.
Cannone wrote that the Trial Court is responsible for jurors, "Thus, the counsel's claim that Fanning was 'in charge of' the jury and 'was directly involved in efforts to have one or the jurors dismissed' .... is simply false."
Jury selection is scheduled to start on April 1 for Read's second trial.
