BOSTON — Nearly 100 potential jurors arrived at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., this morning for the first date of the murder trial of Mansfield’s Karen Read.

Ahead of the arrival of the potential jurors, Judge Beverly Cannone issued her ruling on the most contentious pretrial issue: whether the defense could use the third-party killer theory they have argued for roughly a year now. It was a mixed ruling: Cannone said that the defense can “develop” their theory over the questioning of witnesses but may not outright state their theory in their opening arguments.

“I am well within my rights, pursuant to the case law, to exclude the third-party culprit defense,” Cannone said. “I am not going to do that now. I’m going to give you a chance to develop it through relevant, competent, admissible evidence. But you cannot open on it.”

Read, 44, was indicted in June of 2022 for second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter, and leaving the scene of a collision causing death in the Jan. 29, 2022, death of John O’Keefe, 46, a 16-year member of the Boston Police Department and Read’s boyfriend of two years. Prosecutors say she struck him with her Lexus SUV outside a Canton home after a night of heavy drinking and left him to die in the cold.

Outside the courthouse, the usual crowd of Read supporters who carry signs and wear shirts declaring her innocence and highlighting defense theories had been disbursed to 200 feet away from the courthouse and the parking lot behind the county Registry of Deeds building across High Street from the courthouse. A handful of recognizable regular demonstrators had gotten rid of their signs and graphic tees and congregated within the court-ordered “buffer zone” and had seemed to agree to wear the color pink to indicate support.

The jurors were packed into the Superior courtroom averaging 10 per bench, four benches deep on one side and five benches deep on the other, shortly before 10 a.m.

Cannone gave them a brief overview of the allegations against Read and definitions of the charges against her. Cannone indicated that the charge of murder would require intention and malice, whereas manslaughter is causing someone’s death without intention.

During basic questioning of the potential jurors, the vast majority indicated that they had heard of or talked about this case. It’s an early indication of possible struggles to seat a jury in a case that has been a media and community touchstone for a very long time now. A significant subset of these potential jurors, perhaps 20 or 30, also indicated that they had formed an opinion on the case and a further subset said that they had developed a bias in either direction.

Jurors are not named in court but are instead identified by their juror numbers, which are printed on small white cards. The potential jurors held up their card if they answered in the positive to any of Cannone’s questions. In addition to familiarity with and bias in the case, her questions included whether the commitment would be a financial hardship and whether the potential jurors knew or had a relationship with anyone on the witness lists.

The trial is expected to last five to six weeks, according to the prosecution’s pretrial memorandum issued today. In that memo, they also named 87 potential witnesses, including 23 police officers — most from the Massachusetts State Police, several from the Canton Police Department and one each from the Dighton and Needham police departments. The defense named 77 of their own witnesses, with much overlap with the prosecution’s list, and reserved the right to call anyone from the prosecution’s list.

Names that have come up in the copious pretrial motions and arguments were all over the witness lists, including Canton Police Sgt. Michael Lank, who was the first on the scene, and Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, who took over the case as the primary investigator. So too were Brian Albert, his nephew Colin Albert, and his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe, who are principals in the defense theory of the case that O’Keefe was beaten nearly to death and then placed in the yard to die in the cold.

Of note is that Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey himself makes an appearance on the defense’s witness list. Morrissey had taken the unprecedented step of issuing a public statement decrying the defense theory in the case, for which the defense argued he should be sanctioned and his office disqualified from prosecuting the case.

Judge Cannone, while admitting the statement may have pushed the limits of professional conduct, declined to sanction Morrissey or disqualify his office.

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