Karen Read returns to Norfolk County Superior Court on Tuesday for a motion hearing as the case heads to trial in April.
There are at least three hearings scheduled for Read this week, with a second motion hearing scheduled for Wednesday and a final pre-trial conference hearing set for Friday. Read will also appear in federal court on Wednesday as part of an appeal to the U.S. District Court to get two charges dropped.
Last week, lawyers for Read filed a motion to dismiss the case and argued that prosecutors intentionally withheld exculpatory evidence and violated her right to a fair trial.
Prosecutors disagreed and in a separate motion described Read’s legal team as engaging in “repeated and baseless allegations of evidence tampering.”
The defense highlighted the failure by prosecutors to turn over all of the surveillance footage from the Canton police station recorded when Read’s SUV was towed to the station’s sallyport.
Prosecutors say Read, 45, intentionally backed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, after dropping him off outside the Canton home of a fellow Boston police officer following a night of drinking on Jan. 29, 2022.
She faces three counts: second-degree murder, second-degree murder and leaving of a collision resulting in death. Her first trial ended with a hung jury.
In their motion to dismiss, Read’s lawyers argued that prosecutors withheld footage from the Canton police sallyport for three years and that they received videos during the middle of the first trial and as recently as earlier this year.
Read’s SUV was towed to the station’s sallyport, and her defense says surveillance videos from the station omit the critical 42-minute period after which it arrived. They say those videos could be exculpatory because they may show the condition of Read’s taillight when it arrived there.
Prosecutors agreed that the evidence was turned over in an “untimely” fashion, but they argued the videos were not exculpatory for Read.
“The defendant cannot show irremediable harm to her right to a fair trial as it relates to the Canton Police Department surveillance video,” the filing reads.
The hearing begins at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
