Karen Read returns to Dedham’s Norfolk County Superior Court on Friday afternoon.
A month since her murder trial ended in a mistrial due to a “starkly divided” jury, her attorneys argue that she should not face two of three counts prosecutors charged her with as a second trial looms for January 2025.
The hearing starts at 2 p.m. and prosecutors previously described the attempts to dismiss the charges as lacking merit or legal foundation.
Presiding Judge Beverly Cannone will hear arguments about a motion filed by Read’s attorneys to dismiss the two counts from a second trial. The lawyers claim they learned from five jurors that the jury reached a not-guilty decision on the two counts but were confused by the judge’s instructions.
Read’s attorneys are attempting to dismiss the charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident causing injury or death. Pursuing a second trial on those two counts would represent a double jeopardy violation, Read’s attorneys contend in court filings.
In the most recent filing by the defense, attorney David Yannetti wrote that “Juror B” contacted him and said, “No one thought she hit him on purpose or even knew that she had hit him.”
Prosecutors say that Read struck her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe with her SUV while driving intoxicated just after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022. The couple had gone out drinking at bars and she had dropped him off at a house party in Canton of a fellow Boston police officer.
While prosecutors say she struck O’Keefe with her SUV, the defense claims he went inside the house and others are responsible for his death.
Read’s trial lasted more than two months and ended with a mistrial. The following day, jurors began reaching out to Read’s defense team, according to court filings.
In an affidavit by attorney Alan Jackson, he wrote that “Juror D” said that “the jury actually discussed telling the judge that they had agreed unanimously on NOT GUILTY verdicts for Counts 1 and 3, but they were not sure if they were allowed to say so.”
The jury believed they were compelled to come to a decision on all counts before they could report verdicts on any of the counts, Jackson wrote.
After the jury discussed, they decided to inform the court that they were deadlocked on the second count, and they expected to receive further instructions about the other two counts they were decided on, Jackson wrote.
“Juror D explained that he/she was confused and upset that such further instruction never came,” Jackson wrote.
MassLive was unable to verify the attorneys’ claims that the jury unanimously agreed on any of the charges.
Jack Lu, a former Massachusetts judge told MassLive last month that he did not find the double jeopardy arguments very convincing and said he “rejected” lawyers’ arguments because a “valid verdict” was not returned by jurors.
Last Friday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office disclosed in a court filing that they received an unsolicited voicemail from a juror who said that it was “true what has come out recently about the jury being unanimous on charges 1 and 3.”
The voicemail was left on July 21. Adam Lally, the lead prosecutor for the Read case, said that a second voicemail was left on July 26, in which they said they could confirm jurors were “unanimous” on two of the three charges against Read.
But, Lally wrote, prosecutors did not respond to the messages because they are “ethically prohibited from engaging in discussions about the jury’s deliberative process.”
Read, 44, is accused of drunkenly hitting her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, with her car after a night of bar-hopping, and leaving him to die in the snow outside a home in Canton. Her attorneys contend she was framed and is the victim of a law enforcement conspiracy.
