Additional Coverage:
Jury deliberations are underway in the Karen Read murder trial. After closing arguments concluded Friday morning, Judge Beverly Cannone spent part of the afternoon giving the jury its instructions.
Alternates were then chosen, and the jury began deliberations. Juror No. 5 will serve as foreperson.
Read, 45, is accused of striking and killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, 46, with her SUV on January 29, 2022, then leaving him to die in a blizzard. The trial, which began April 22, included over 30 days of testimony.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan argued in his closing statement that Read, while intoxicated, struck O’Keefe and left the scene. He pointed to witness testimony claiming Read repeatedly said, “I hit him.”
Brennan also emphasized that O’Keefe’s phone remained stationary from the alleged time of impact until his body was discovered five and a half hours later. The prosecution also highlighted Read’s descriptions of O’Keefe’s body during television interviews as callous and indicative of guilt.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson countered in his closing statement, emphatically stating three times, “There was no collision.” He criticized the investigation as flawed, citing a lack of physical evidence and the dismissal of the lead homicide detective from the Massachusetts State Police. Jackson dismissed the prosecution’s crash reconstruction as inadequate and asserted that the prosecution’s case was “cooked.”
Read faces a potential sentence of 15 years to life if convicted of second-degree murder, and 5 to 20 years if convicted of drunken driving manslaughter. The jury is expected to continue deliberations after a delayed start Friday.