Karen Read murder trial enters defense phase as team prepares to fight allegations

Karen Read’s defense team of heavy-hitting attorneys is ready to begin tearing down the prosecution’s murder case against her after the state rested its case this week.

Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, outside an acquaintance’s house party just after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.

The prosecution alleges that Read struck O’Keefe with her 2021 Lexus SUV in a drunken ragme after an evening of fighting before leaving him to freeze to death in the front yard of 34 Fairview Road. 

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Special prosecutor Hank Brennan rested the state’s case on Thursday, nearly two months after jury selection began. Brennan’s final witness, Aperture crash reconstructionist Dr. Judson Welcher spent three days on the stand providing testimony on his findings supporting the state’s allegations that Read fatally struck O’Keefe with her vehicle. 

He pointed to his own experimentation using a Lexus taillight and wet paint to illustrate how O’Keefe could have sustained the injuries to his arm, and he said that a “glancing” blow from the vehicle could explain why the victim didn’t have typical car-strike injuries. 

“If you impact the hand with a 1-inch narrow metal bar, that’s a lot different than if you have a broad, plastic taillight or rear body panel,” Welcher said. “So when you have distributed loads, you can take much more.”

Read’s defense team is set to begin presenting their case on Friday as attorneys Alan Jackson, David Yannetti and Robert Alessi look to sow doubt around the state’s allegations, with Yannetti viewed as the strongest member of Read’s team by experts. 

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“David Yannetti is the best trial lawyer in the case,” retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge and Boston College law professor Jack Lu told Fox News Digital, “with the possible exception of Brennan.” 

Yannetti is a seasoned criminal defense attorney and has been with Read since before her first trial. 

“He has the range that Mr. Brennan might lack,” Lu said. “Brennan, with all his spectacular talent, mostly has one speed, well, two speeds. Yannetti, an award-winning advocate since law school, has seen it all and fights for a position from which the defense can possibly salvage things.”

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The defense will look to dismantle the state’s case, which often pointed to Read’s interviews with various news outlets, addressing the public in her own words. 

“So I thought, ‘Could I have run him over?’” Read said in a 2024 interview with Investigation Discovery. “Did he try to get me as I was leaving and I didn’t know it?”

Read’s legal team insists her vehicle never came in contact with O’Keefe while pointing to the possibility that something or someone else was responsible for the police officer’s death.

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“And then when I hired David Yannetti, I asked him those questions,” Read said in the same clip. “The night of Jan. 29, David, what if I ran his foot over? Or what if I clipped him in the knee and he passed out or went to care for himself and threw up or passed out? And David said, ‘Yeah, then you have some element of culpability.'”

Lu believes the primary goal for the defense team should be to humanize Read in a way that paints her in a favorable light to the jurors while taking aim at an alleged cover-up scheme by the Massachusetts Police Department. 

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“The prosecutor has made her into a self-absorbed caricature,” Lu told Fox News Digital, adding, “They must get into the hatred of her by [former investigator] Michael Proctor.” 

Proctor is on the witness list, but it remains unclear whether the defense will put him on the stand. Prosecutors did not call him this time around after his testimony in the first trial saw jurors shaking their heads as they heard his inappropriate texts about Read in court. The case ended in a mistrial, and he lost his job days before the second trial kicked off.

Read has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she faces the possibility of life in prison for the most serious charge of second-degree murder. 

“Right now Ms. Read’s legal case is badly wounded,” Lu said. “Mr. Yannetti has the ability to charm the jury, fight the judge as needed, present the defense witnesses – some of whom are hostile – and in closing, inspire the jury.”