Karen Read's attorneys want DA Michael Morrissey's personal email, cell phone

BOSTON — Karen Read’s team wants to look into Norfolk DA Michael Morrissey’s personal email and cell phone for any references to their client’s case, saying they have evidence he’s been making improper communications with the court and witnesses.

“As grounds for this motion, recent reporting, corroborated by documentary evidence, demonstrates that DA Morrissey used his personal email address to communicate ex parte with Stoughton District Court personnel and judges,” the motion filed by Read attorneys David Yannetti, Alan Jackson and Elizabeth Little states.

It was one of six total documents filed on Friday morning in the case that ended in mistrial earlier this year and in which the scope of the next trial is hotly contested. Read is also the target of a civil case by the family of her alleged murder victim, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, which was recently ordered to hold off until after the criminal trial is over.

The argument follows a filing last month by Mark Bederow for Holden-based blogger Aidan Kearney, who has extensively covered the Read case on his blogs and social media accounts under the “Turtleboy” name from an intensely pro-Read perspective and has been charged with intimidating witnesses in Read’s case for her benefit.

Bederow’s letter, the new filing states, claimed that Morrissey used his personal email address to chastise the Stoughton District Court for “leaking” information about a public proceeding against Kearney to the defendant and that his communications included screenshots of imessages from a pro-prosecution witness in Read’s case, as well as other information indicating more than one witness was in communication with the DA’s office.

“The Commonwealth has … acknowledged that it is in receipt of statements from ‘a number of witnesses in this matter,’ which were apparently withheld from the defense,” the new filing states.

The rest of the nine-page filing stresses that by law prosecutors, including the DA himself, are required to provide all discovery to the defense which includes, quoting relevant state law: “[m]aterial and relevant police reports, photographs, tangible objects, all intended exhibits, reports of physical examinations of any person or scientific tests or experiments, and statements of persons the party intends to call as witnesses.”

They further argue that such disclosures cannot be legally shielded by the use of personal communications as opposed to official ones, as they allege Morrissey has done here.

Lack of ‘basic’ understanding

In a separate filing, the defense claims that the prosecution’s new forensics expert, Shanon R. Burgess, misunderstands some basic concepts — including the difference between megabits and megabytes — in his analysis of the extraction of the data from the infotainment system of Read’s Lexus, which prosecutors say was her tool to kill O’Keefe.

Read’s attorneys are basically arguing that the first “chip-off” analysis did in fact extract the total contents of the car’s system based on the storage capacity specifications and that the prosecution’s new expert erred when he said that more was to be gained because he misunderstood the specifications to be either megabytes or gigabytes as opposed to what they were: the far smaller megabits and gigabits.

The prosecution’s request for a potentially destructive “chip-on” analysis is thus made with faulty logic, the defense argues, and if they are to go through with it then the defense wants their own expert present during the procedure.

Open the sidebars

Read’s team says they can’t “properly prepare for trial” unless the court releases the transcripts of the sidebar conversations held during and before the trial.

“Without access to transcripts of the sidebar conferences, which remain impounded as of this date, we are unable to properly prepare and litigate the anticipated motions in limine,” Read attorney David Yannetti wrote in a supporting affidavit.”

Prosecutions filed a motion to impound all sidebar conferences on April 10, ahead of the trial start date of April 29. The rationale at the time was that to publish“matters discussed at sidebar, including juror names, information and potentially sensitive responses to inquiry, while trial is ongoing could prejudice the parties and expose jurors to extraneous matters.”

The defense request does not ask for the transcripts that include juror names, but “instead seeks only the release of the sidebar discussions that took place during trial, and those that addressed evidentiary rulings prior to trial.”

The Read case

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree murder (Count 1), motor vehicle manslaughter while operating under the influence (Count 2), and leaving the scene of an accident causing death (Count 3) in the killing of her boyfriend of roughly two years, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.

Prosecutors say that she struck O’Keefe with her SUV after yet another drunken bout of fighting in the troubled relationship and left him to freeze and die on the front yard of a Canton home where the pair were supposed to continue a night out after the bars closed.

The defense counters that O’Keefe made it inside that home and was killed by others inside, including possibly then-homeowner Brian Albert, who was a fellow Boston Police officer. The well-connected police family then worked with local and state police investigators to cover up the crime and frame Read, the defense team says.

A trial held earlier this year ended with a hung jury. Not long after Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone declared a mistrial, Read’s defense team filed a motion to have Counts 1 and 3 tossed in the next trial because multiple jurors, they said, had come forward to say they were unanimously ready to acquit Read on those counts and were only hung on Count 2 but didn’t know how to indicate that.

Cannone denied the motion so the defense team took it to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court where both sides argued their cases and answered questions during oral arguments before all seven justices on Wednesday.

-------