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By Jenna Sundel
News Reporter
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Karen Read appeared in court for a hearing on several motions on Tuesday ahead of her upcoming retrial.
Why It Matters
Read is charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.
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What is Karen Read Accused of Doing?
Read is accused of fatally hitting her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, who worked as a Boston police officer for 16 years, with her car in 2022.
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What To Know
The defense is seeking the metadata and log files for video taken by surveillance cameras at the Canton Police Department on January 29, 2022.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson said the prosecution initially told the defense that the video was being stored on the iCloud account of a retired detective. The state later said the video was being stored on the department's video file system.
"These videos have been a pain point for this case," Jackson said.
Jackson said the information the defense is seeking will give them more information than the raw video, including if the video has been altered or if anything has been deleted.
Prosecutor Hank Brennan said the defense is not entitled to file metadata.
"There's nothing mysterious about it. There's no hiding about it. There's no story. It's just video on the detective file on his hard drive," Brennan said.
Defense attorney Elizabeth Little argued the defense's motion to compel discovery from the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office investigation into the murder of Sandra Birchmore.
Birchmore, 23, was found dead in her apartment in Canton on February 4, 2021. Former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell was charged with her murder.
Farwell allegedly entered a sexual relationship with Birchmore when she was 15 years old after she participated in Stoughton Police Department's Explorers program.
Little said law enforcement officers who are witnesses in Read's case were also witnesses in the Birchmore case.
Brennan said the Birchmore case has nothing to do with Read's case and the defense is trying to create "an illusion of impropriety."
Judge Beverly Cannone took the matter under advisement.
Who is Karen Read?
Read was a financial analyst and adjunct professor at Bentley University. She began dating O'Keefe in 2020.
Karen Read's Trial Ends in Mistrial
Her first trial began on April 16, 2024. On July 1, the judge declared a mistrial after the jury said it was deadlocked on the fifth day of deliberations.
Karen Read's Lawyers File Motion to Dismiss Murder Case
Read's attorneys argued before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to dismiss charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene. The court sided with Cannone's previous decision to deny the defense's motion to dismiss the charges.
What People Are Saying
Little, arguing the motion to compel discovery from the Birchmore investigation: "The parallels in these two cases could not be clearer. It's the same material witnesses, same investigators, same prosecutors, same failure to investigate a law enforcement officer who should have been a suspect."
Brennan, objecting to the motion: "It's easy to throw out a name and attach it to the Birchmore case troopers, the D.A., malign their name the way they know how to do, but when you're arguing discovery motion, there must be a factual basis for it."
What Happens Next
Read's retrial is scheduled to begin in April.
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