Karen Read jurors warn they can’t reach a verdict in police officer murder case

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday

Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

The jury deciding the fate of Karen Read has said it is unable to reach a unanimous decision after eight weeks of testimony and four days of deliberations.

However, Judge Beverly Cannone sent them back to continue talking as some of their deliberation days ended early. The jury continued to deliberate throughout the afternoon and is now set to resume on Monday.

Jurors began deliberating on Tuesday and on Friday told the judge that they could not come to a unanimous decision as to whether or not Read was responsible for killing her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe in 2022. Read has denied the charges.

If the jury remains hung, it would end the case - though the state could decide if it wants to retrial Reed for the alleged murder. She faces a second-degree murder charge that carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

The jury’s deliberations come after eight weeks of testimony in the highly publicized trial that began in April surrounded by a media storm and fanned by crime bloggers.

Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, was charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while impaired and leaving the scene of an accident in the January 2022 death of her boyfriend John O’Keefe. The state said that Read ran over O’Keefe, killing him after their relationship deteriorated. The defense argues that O’Keefe was killed in a fight with others and Read has been framed for the murder.

In closing arguments on Tuesday, defense attorney Alan Jackson described a cancer of lies that turned into a cover-up, and told jurors they’re the “only thing standing between Karen Read and the tyranny of injustice.”

“You have been lied to in this courtroom. Your job is to make sure you don’t ever ever look the other away,” he told the court.

But Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally told jurors “there is no conspiracy.”

Lally began his closing argument with the words four witnesses reported hearing Read say after O’Keefe was discovered on the snowy lawn: “The defendant repeatedly said ‘I hit him. I hit him. Oh my God. I hit him.’”

“Those were the words that came from the defendant’s mouth,” Lally said.

Prosecutors argued that Read dropped O’Keefe, 46, off at a house party in Canton hosted by fellow officer, Brian Albert, after a night of drinking, struck him while making a three-point turn and drove away, leaving him to die in the snow.

She allegedly returned hours later to find O’Keefe’s snow-covered body in the front year and was heard repeatedly shouting “I hit him, I hit him” as first responders were on the scene, witnesses have testified.

But Read’s defense team claimed that she was framed by someone who beat O’Keefe to death at Albert’s home and that he was bitten by the family dog.

They say the homeowner’s relationship with local and state police tainted their investigation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there was a cover-up in this case, plain and simple,” Jackson said during closing arguments.

The defense also argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider other suspects, including Albert and other law enforcement officers who were at the party.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated behind closed doors in Norfolk County Superior Court, while a “sidewalk jury” of true crime bloggers and Read supporters gathered outside for days.

Many were drawn to the case because of an online blog run by Aidan Kearney, aka Turtleboy, who has relentlessly questioned the prosecution. He has also been accused of harassing witnesses. Kearney was charged with witness intimidation and conspiracy, which he denies.