Karen Read retrial jurors end day without a verdict

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Jun 16, 2025

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DEDHAM, Mass. — Jurors in the Karen Read retrial defense team made a pitch that the verdict slip jurors will use to record their decisions be changed in the midst of deliberations — an effort the judge denied. Jurors ended the day without a verdict.

Monday was the first full day of jury deliberations that will decide the fate of Read, a 45-year-old Mansfield former college lecturer and financial analyst. She’s accused of mowing down her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022, and leaving him to freeze and die on a Canton front yard.

Attorneys made their closing arguments to jurors in Norfolk Superior Court there on Friday before Judge Beverly J. Cannone dismissed the seven women and five men to deliberate, which they did for roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes before going home for the weekend.

Their important work comes after they sat through a lengthy trial: 31 total days of testimony spread over seven calendar weeks.

Verdict slip

Monday morning began with the defense formally requesting that the verdict slip, which is a piece of paper the jury records its verdict on, be altered.

“Respectfully, the present verdict slip is unclear and otherwise confusing,” defense attorneys wrote in the motion.

“This lack of clarity and resultant risk of confusion and error can easily be minimized by tailoring and clarifying the verdict slip to better aid the jury in memorializing its verdict. Indeed, there is no compelling reason not to do so,” the motion continued ahead of offering a version that “presents formatting changes, not substantive changes, to the court’s verdict slip.”

Attorney David Yannetti had first verbally argued for a change to the slip on Friday after the jury had begun deliberations.

“After review, the motion is denied,” she wrote on the document itself. “The verdict slip is consistent with Massachusetts law and is to (be) viewed in conjunction with the jury instructions. A copy of the jury instructions was sent into the jury with the verdict slip on Friday.”

Deliberation

The streets of Dedham’s small downtown were awash in pink — the adopted color of Read’s supporters — as massive numbers came to watch on their phones or even TVs under clear skies and 72 degree weather. The perfect conditions may not hold into Tuesday and Wednesday, when rain is forecast, if deliberation drags on.

Read supporters outside the “buffer zone” surrounding the courthouse often carried signs expressing their opinion of Read’s innocence, or even outfitted their cars with their messages. Inside the buffer zone, the support was hushed — barred from making noise, they expressed their feelings with the American Sign Language symbol for “love.”

The jury deliberated for five days following Read’s first trial last year but indicated they could not reach a verdict. Cannone declared a mistrial after a third note indicated an impasse.

Read is charged with murder in the second degree, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. There are lesser charges jurors can consider under the manslaughter charge if they so wish.

The second-degree murder charge carries a mandatory minimum of 15 years in state prison, OUI manslaughter a mandatory minimum of five years, and leaving the scene a mandatory minimum of one year. State guidelines advise but do not require a maximum of life in prison for the murder charge, 5 to 20 years in prison for OUI manslaughter, and 5 to 7.5 years for level 7 leaving the scene.

Prosecutor Hank Brennan in his closing said that the story of how Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, Read’s boyfriend, lost his life on Jan. 29, 2022, was “simple.”

“Ms. Read was with Mr. O’Keefe and she got drunk. She drank. She was two to three times over the legal limit and they went to a party, an after party, and they were fighting,” Brennan said. “… She got drunk, she hit him, she left him to die. It’s that simple.”

But that theory falls apart, defense attorney Alan Jackson said, because defense experts agree that “There was no collision. There was no collision. There was no collision.”

The prosecution could only feign a case, he asserted, because “their investigation was flawed from the start because their investigator was corrupted from the start by bias, personal loyalties.”

He said that for this case, “reasonable doubt abounds.”

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