At the start of each of the four days of jury selection in the Karen Read trial, the same scenario has played out — almost every juror card flies up in the air when the presiding judge asks if they had heard of the case.
Indeed, of the 290 potential jurors who have reported for jury duty over four days, nearly 260 reported having seen or talked about the Read case. A smaller but still substantial group said they had formed an opinion about it.
But answering affirmatively to either question is not a dealbreaker, legal experts say.
The key factor the judge and lawyers for both sides will be looking for is jurors who are able to set those preconceived notions aside and follow the judge’s instructions, explained Jack Lu, a retired Superior Court judge.
“No problem with knowing about the case but a commitment to understanding the jury instructions, and following them, are key,” he said.
Read’s is far from the first Massachusetts court case to be overwhelmed by publicity. The Aaron Hernandez trial and that of Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev drew an equally intense media firestorm, if not greater.
But Read’s case is unique because of the amount of public participation.
“What sets this case apart is that there is an extra element of public participation partially fueled by click revenue (income streams from social media platform fees and related income and sales paid to creator),” Lu said. “This is a first in Massachusetts.”
Jury selection has been a painstaking process. Just 10 jurors have been picked from the pool of 286 questioned individually.
Potential jurors each fill out a three-page questionnaire when they arrive for the day. Then they are called up to sidebar one by one where they are questioned by the judge and sometimes lawyers for both sides.
The process can be quick — some jurors are whisked out of the courtroom almost immediately — or drawn out, with the juror walking away from the bench briefly while the lawyers huddle up before being called back.
Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said the lawyers will need to look beyond just the questioning to determine if a juror is fit to serve on the Read case.
“They need to probe beneath the surface, beneath what people say during voir dire, and scrutinize social media activity and media consumption to ascertain the likelihood of impartiality,” he said.
David Barnard, Ph.D., the director of jury consulting at Magna Legal Services, which has offices in Boston, went a step further, warning that the Read case could attract “stealth jurors” — those who obscure their true knowledge of the case in order to make it onto the jury.
It’s a relatively uncommon phenomenon, Barnard said, but a common symptom of high-profile cases.
“Anybody who says that they don’t know about this case or never heard about this case, while that might be truthful, that should potentially be a red flag,” he said in a telephone interview.
During the selection process, both prosecutors and Read’s defense are given 16 chances to strike a juror without providing a reason.
It’s not clear how many have been used so far, but Barnard said the strikes are a key tool for both sides as they work to seat not just fair jurors but also those who they believe might be more favorable to their case.
“It’s this unnammable thing,“ he said. ”They just know in their gut based on the facts of the case … this person would not be a fair juror for my case.”
The lawyers are more likely to use the strikes as selection continues, potentially dragging out the process, he said.
“You need to be very strategic in your use of those strikes,” he said. “It’s somewhat of a game of chicken.”
Read, 45, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident causing injury or death in connection with the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O’Keefe.
Prosecutors say Read intentionally backed her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage amid turmoil in their relationship, then left him to die in the snow outside the Canton home of a fellow Boston Police officer. But Read’s defense has claimed O’Keefe was beaten up inside the house, and his body was planted outside in an effort to frame Read.
