Karen Read retrial: Opening statements slated today

Opening statements are expected Tuesday in the trial of Karen Read who is accused of causing the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend but whose supporters contend is being framed for a murder she didn t commit Prosecutors say Read backed her SUV into John O Keefe after dropping him off at a party and returned hours later to find him dead Defense attorneys say she was a victim of a conspiracy involving the police and they plan as they did in the first trial to offer evidence pointing to the real killer Nine men and nine women were chosen to serve as the jurors and six alternates Read has been charged with second-degree murder manslaughter and leaving the scene A mistrial was declared last year after jurors disclosed they were at an impasse The second trial will look much like the first with the same judge various of the same onlookers and several of the prominent defense attorneys A rocky relationship comes under scrutiny Read had worked as a financial analyst and a Bentley College adjunct professor before being charged in the death of O Keefe who was when he died The -year police veteran was uncovered unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer After a night out drinking prosecutors say Read who is dropped O Keefe at the house party just after midnight As she made a three-point turn prosecutors say she struck O Keefe before driving away She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank As at the first trial prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read s actions were intentional They are expected to call eyewitnesses who will describe how the couple s relationship had begun to sour before O Keefe s death including his brother and sister-in-law who testified that Read narrated her the couple had argued in Aruba after she caught O Keefe kissing another woman The defense blames a third party for O Keefe s death The defense is expected to portray the scrutiny into O Keefe s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party Among the key spectators they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor who led the probe but has since been fired after a disciplinary board ascertained he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues He is also on the prosecution s witness list Proctor s testimony was a key moment during the first trial when the defense suggested his texts about Read and the incident demonstrated he was biased and had singled her out early in the study ignoring other prospective individuals They also are expected to suggest Read was framed saying O Keefe was indeed killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside In the first trial defense attorneys suggested investigators focused on Read because she was a convenient outsider who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as persons Ahead of the second trial the two sides sparred over whether Read s lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O Keefe Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can t mention expected third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert a retired police officer who owned the Canton home and his friend Brian Higgins Lawyers cannot implicate Albert s nephew Colin Albert the judge mentioned A town-commissioned audit of the Canton Police Department published March identified several mistakes with the probe but no evidence of a cover-up It suggested that first responders should have photographed O Keefe where he was determined before he was moved and that all interviews of critical onlookers should have been done at the department after O Keefe was taken to a hospital The defense s double jeopardy argument fails Soon after the mistrial Read s lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions Defense attorney Martin Weinberg disclosed five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene but that they hadn t described the judge The defense announced that because jurors had agreed Read wasn t guilty of murder and leaving the scene retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy But Cannone rejected that argument as did the state s highest court a federal court judge and an appeals court Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim saying it amounted to hearsay conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration A new prosecutor actions in The second trial will likely look similar to the first It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge and dozens of Read s passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside The charges primary defense lawyers and a great number of of the nearly bystanders will also be the same The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor Hank Brennan A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial Brennan has represented several prominent clients including notorious Boston gangster James Whitey Bulger and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the situation What evidence will be offered Prosecutors are likely to rely on eyewitnesses from the scene in the early days of the trial counting on testimony from police officers and firefighters who recalled Read making comments that implicated her in the killing They also are likely to introduce evidence of a broken taillight on Read s SUV that prosecutors argue was damaged when she hit O Keefe and viable DNA from O Keefe identified on her motorcycle The defense s goal is to raise doubts about the prosecution event and plant the seed that she was framed They are expected to introduce evidence of a sloppy police inquiry including the failure to search the house and mistakes in the police log They also are expected to suggest that a hair exposed on the taillight was planted and the police probe was marred by a conflict of interest