A Massachusetts judge on Tuesday abruptly ended a hearing related to the Karen Read retrial after she expressed “grave concern” over new information presented by the prosecution.
The information involves communications between the defense and forensic consulting engineering company ARCCA, a firm that does accident reconstructions and which provided two defense witnesses during the first trial.
Read, 44, is accused of hitting her boyfriend John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in 2022.
Prosecutors on Tuesday were seeking to keep those two crash experts from testifying in Read’s second trial, saying it was not disclosed the defense allegedly paid ARCCA nearly $24,000 during the first trial and collaborated with them on their testimony — a claim defense attorney Alan Jackson denied.
“The implications of that information may have profound effects on this defense and defense counsel,” Judge Beverly Cannone said in court. “For that reason, I’m going to suspend today so that when we meet again to address these issues, all affected will be appropriately prepared.”
According to prosecutors, Read and O’Keefe, a veteran Boston police officer, had been drinking when she dropped him off at the Canton, Mass. home of another Boston cop. It was then she’s alleged to have hit him with her car before driving off. An autopsy found his cause of death to be blunt force trauma and hypothermia.
The defense meanwhile argued O’Keefe was killed inside the home and taken back outside while Read, a financial analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley College, was framed for the murder.
During the trial, one of ARCCA’s witnesses said the damage to Read’s vehicle was not consistent with striking a pedestrian.
Read’s case ended in a mistrial with a deadlocked jury last July and charges were quickly refiled. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled last week she could stand trial again.