BOSTON — Karen Read case worlds collided this morning in Norfolk Superior Court when Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney joined Read at the defense table as the prosecution sought data from Kearney’s phone.

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.

A trial last year on the charges ended in mistrial. She is scheduled to be retried on April 1.

Kearney, 43, of Holden, is a staunch defender of Read’s innocence through his YouTube videos and through a network of blogs and social media accounts under the “Turtleboy,” brand. He is charged with multiple counts of witness intimidation in the Read case. He’s also the defacto leader of the “Free Karen Read” movement.

“The information is relevant and material to Karen Read’s case,” Read case special prosecutor Hank Brennan said during the day’s first hearing, in which he sought the data from two of Kearney’s phones.

“There was a relationship between Ms. Read and Mr. Kearney wherein Ms. Read would give information to Mr. Kearney,” he argued.

His argument was then interrupted by the arrival of Read and her legal team, to which Brennan protested that Read has no standing on his Rule 17 evidentiary motion for Kearney’s phone data.

Read defense attorney Alan Jackson countered that the request has to do with trying to establish some kind of “consciousness of guilt” on Read’s part which automatically makes it her business. The judge sided with Jackson and allowed the team to stay at the desk and speak on her behalf.

“This is the ultimate fishing expedition, your honor,” said Kearney defense attorney Timothy Bradl, who had no objection to the Read team’s presence. He added that Brennan’s request was “bereft of any evidentiary value” and a “gross invasion of privacy” and that “the court should deny this because it’s an 11th hour request.”

The judge made no ruling on the motion Thursday.

The second hearing was much longer: it’s the final scheduled hearing before Read’s second trial beginning on April 1.

That date was in question during the hearing, with the defense arguing that it should be pushed back to April 25 or the most convenient date after that date to allow room for their current federal appeal — which they hope will remove the murder charge — to run its course.

“The sun rises and falls on the murder charge,” defense attorney Jackson argued.

Read’s team has mounted a series of efforts to have two of the charges removed in the case since soon after last summer’s mistrial. They say five jurors have come forward to say that the jury was ready to acquit on the murder and leaving the scene charges and was only hung on the manslaughter charge but did not know they could deliver a partial verdict.

This information, the defense argues, means that to retry Read on those two charges would be a violation of her Double Jeopardy protections — meaning the constitutional right to not be retried after being acquitted. The argument was denied in sequence by Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone, who is the trial judge; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; and U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV. The defense then appealed to the federal First Circuit appeals court, where the effort remains.

Should the First Circuit make a move, Jackson argued, “then that puts the entire case in jeopardy.” Should one or both charges be dropped by the appeals court after the trial jury is impaneled and sworn, he said, the defense would call for a mistrial and all the court’s effort — and expense — of getting the trial ready would be in vain.

Cannone denied the motion. She said the upcoming jury pool was summoned “months ago” and that to develop a new pool would take some 10 weeks. She said that if the First Circuit makes a move, they can deal with it then.

Well before last year’s trial, the blocks surrounding the Superior Court in Dedham developed a carnivalesque atmosphere. Read supporters would gather in droves and hold signs and chant and make their presence very well known. A “buffer zone” was established for the actual trial, which pushed these supporters — and a swelling group of anti-Read activists — back 200 feet from the courthouse.

But the crowd and the supportive honking was still audible from the courtroom, especially as the old courthouse’s windows had to be cracked in attempts to relieve the courtroom of the summer heat.

Special prosecutor Brennan said that the noises “could be influential, intimidating, concerning” and asked for adjustments to the buffer zone’s geography in an attempt to keep such noises from influencing the jury.

Jackson said that the defense takes no position on the argument.

Brennan wants to tell the jury about O’Keefe’s state of mind ahead of his death, and specifically introduce the theory that O’Keefe was preparing to end the relationship with Read.

Jackson called the idea “preposterous” and that the two were getting along “extraordinarily well.” Further, even if that was the case, they were “not tethered to each other in a way that if one wanted to break up with the other one, one was going to murder the other.”

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