Karen Read murder case: Alan Jackson to remain on defense team, judge rules

BOSTON — Karen Read gets to keep her legal team in place.

Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Tuesday morning that Read’s defense team — and particularly attorney Alan Jackson — had not been entirely open and truthful about its dealings with two witnesses from last year’s trial.

Despite that, Read’s right to select her own representation won over and Cannone let Jackson, an attorney from Los Angeles, California, remain on the defense team.

Cannone also ruled that the two witnesses from ARCCA can remain on the witness list.

This is the the first of two remaining hearings scheduled before the trial date of April 1. At today’s hearing, prosecutor Hank Brennan said he expects his trial presentation to take 3 1/2 weeks. Jackson said his side’s presentation could be a week and a half to two weeks.

Read, 45, of Mansfield is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years at the time, on Jan. 29, 2022.

She was tried on those charges last year but that ended in mistrial after jurors returned three notes indicating, in increasingly assertive language, that they could not come to a unanimous decision.

The case has seen a flurry of activity in the intervening time. The defense mounted a multi-pronged effort to have the charges tossed based on their contention that five jurors came forward after trial to say that the jury was ready to unanimously acquit on the murder and leaving the scene counts, but were only hung on the manslaughter charge.

The defense efforts failed before Cannone, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and in a plea for habeas corpus filed in federal court — the argument there being that Read, who has been out on bail since the beginning of the case, be freed of unjust prosecution. And so the parties are finalizing preparations for trial.

On Monday night, the first two episodes of a five-part documentary series on the Read case and trial were released on Investigation Discovery and MAX (the former HBO streaming platform). Read said she wants the series to be her “testimony” on the case and revealed at least two new pieces of her story that Brennan referenced in court on Tuesday.

“The defendant suggested that Mr. O’Keefe took her vodka soda glass from out of her car … and another claim that Ms. Read took a piece of glass from Mr. O’Keefe’s face. Never heard that before,” Brennan said while arguing a motion on evidence for the upcoming trial. “I think first I’d like to consider this new information that we learned last night.”

Jackson’s fate in the case has been in question since a Feb. 25 hearing, which was a continuation of one the week before that ended in a cliffhanger when Brennan said that Jackson had significantly more dealings with two defense experts — and paid them money — than was disclosed to the court. Cannone immediately closed the hearing.

In the Feb. 25 hearing, Read attorney Robert Alessi, who was not a member of the trial team last year, went through a chronology of the defense team’s interactions with the two witnesses in question: Daniel Wolfe and Andrew Rentschler, of ARCCA, LLC.

During the last trial, the pair testified that O’Keefe could not have been struck by Read’s Lexus as the prosecution contends.

In short, Alessi argued that the defense team spoke to Wolfe and Rentschler “only for the purposes of coordination of their testimony and their background,” that they didn’t have any intention to pay the experts — meaning an inducement — “unless one tries to define inducement as being the hope that you’ll get to have the experts testify on behalf of the defense” and that, ahead of their trial testimony, “the rule of the road was there would be no substantive conversations with the ARCCA experts.”

He also admitted that the defense team paid the pair, who were originally retained for the federal probe of the investigation, $23,000.

Other motions

Jackson asks that the April 1 trial date be pushed back to allow the defense team’s appeal of their federal habeas denial to proceed. Appeals prosecutor Caleb Schillinger says that the issue can be further discussed at Thursday’s hearing.

Prosecutor Brennan said that he does not intend to bring up the Aruba trip that was a part of the first trial at the new trial. In the first trial, prosecutor Adam Lally brought witnesses who testified to a big fight between Read and O’Keefe which showed major cracks in their relationship. He said he reserves the right to bring this trip up in trial if the defense opens the door to it.

The prosecution and the defense disagree on whether Read’s LX570 SUV, which is the alleged murder weapon, should be present at a viewing of 34 Fairview Road in Canton, where O’Keefe died on the front lawn.

Brennan said that for the vehicle to be present there, which it was during the viewing of the property at the first trial, would give “misleading” context to the jury about the blizzardy and nighttime conditions present during O’Keefe’s death. Defense attorney Elizabeth Little countered that it is important the car be there for “context” and that to have two separate viewings would make for difficult court logistics.

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