12 jurors selected in Karen Read's 2nd murder trial

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Apr 8, 2025

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DEDHAM, Mass. — Attorneys for the second murder trial of Karen Read ended Tuesday with a total of 12 jurors for the final pool.

After multiple days with a total of 10 in the pool, attorneys picked up two more for the total. On Tuesday they picked three and lost one who “was dismissed for personal reasons,” according to Norfolk Superior Court Clerk James McDermott.

Read told reporters outside court that she expects opening arguments in her case to begin next Tuesday and that defense attorney Alan Jackson will be giving the opening statement. In last year’s first trial, attorney David Yannetti gave the opening while Jackson gave the closing argument.

“I’m anxious and it’s in God’s hands, and we’re fighting and working as hard as we can,” Read told reporters about the trial.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of striking Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, 46, her boyfriend of about two years, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a major snowstorm on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.

She was tried last year on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death, but that ended in a mistrial on July 1, 2024, after the jury reported an impasse through three notes.

Jury selection for her trial began Tuesday of last week and has been expectedly slow. The vast majority of potential jurors brought in every day indicate during general questioning that they had at least heard of the trial, with a majority of those also indicating that they had formed an opinion on the case.

Since Read’s last trial, the defense has mounted efforts to have charges tossed or the case dismissed outright. So far, those efforts have failed before trial Judge Beverly J. Cannone, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the federal district court in Boston, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

On April 1, the same day her retrial started, appellate defense attorney Martin Weinberg filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to consider Read’s case. He has also asked for the Supreme Court to issue a stay to the state courts until it has decided whether it will take up Read’s case.

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