There's been a flurry of new filings in the Karen Read case as both sides prepare for a busy week of hearings ahead of a new trial set to begin in April.
"This week will shape what’s to come for the trial," NBC10 Boston legal analyst Michael Coyne said.
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Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, by hitting him with her SUV outside a home in Canton in January 2022. She's pleaded not guilty, and alleges she was framed.
On the docket this week are a federal appeals court hearing Wednesday and three hearings before Judge Beverly Cannone in Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday to address, among other things, outstanding issues including defense requests for data and video of the defendant’s SUV inside the Canton Police Department. Her attorneys say the video’s been withheld and manipulated as part of a conspiracy to frame their client, resulting in "extraordinary governmental misconduct."
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The prosecution has moved to keep a pair of accident reconstruction experts for the defendant from testifying. It claims the defense misled the court about its relationship with the experts in the initial trial.
Coyne characterized the situation as "an extraordinary amount of skirmishes" over legal issues with the trial looming.
Cannone will have to decide if attorneys will face sanctions, and Coyne said that, if Read's "are sanctioned to the point where they cannot participate in the retrial, I would expect an appeal, which will bring a delay."
He also called the federal appeal, of the Supreme Judicial Court's ruling that retrying Read doesn't amount to double jeopardy, as "a real Hail Mary" relying on the idea that a "federal court will involve themselves in a pending state court matter."
More Karen Read news
In new filings released Monday, the defense continues to push its request for the court to compel the commonwealth to provide a copy of surveillance video from the Canton Police Department's sallyport complete with metadata. The video in question has become a major point of contention in the case and the newest motion to dismiss.
As the new trial creeps closer, Read's team filed a motion to dismiss all charges against her late last month, claiming she "has been severely prejudiced by the Commonwealth's pervasive misconduct." The Norfolk County District Attorney's Office has said, "The Commonwealth disputes any ethical violations or misconduct let alone misconduct that taints the legal system or infringes upon the defendant's right to a fair trial."
In that motion to dismiss, the defense said that prosecutors suppressed video surveillance footage from Canton police that would show she's innocent and misled the jury with apparently altered footage from a garage, known as a sallyport, during the first trial, making "a mockery of Ms. Read's right to due process."
The defense has previously raised questions about the sallyport video, claiming the version produced in court during the first trial was edited in such a way that it jumps from one moment in time to another, seemingly showing people appearing or disappearing throughout the video.
It's also inverted – as seen on the backward number "4" on the garage bay door.
Metadata, according to defense expert Matthew Erickson in an affidavit provided to the court, would allow experts to "properly test the authenticity and integrity of the video footage." However, the defense claims that the versions of the video provided in discovery were not transferred in a "forensically sound manner" and lack that metadata.
New defense filings also double down on the subject of two accident reconstruction experts from forensic consulting firm ARCCA, denying allegations by the commonwealth that the experts were paid by the defense without that fact being disclosed. In an affidavit, Read's attorneys say they never paid the experts for their opinions, but did reimburse them for the expense of traveling to Norfolk Superior Court. They did so, the affidavit says, under the advisement of the U.S. Attorney's Office. The commonwealth has been trying to get those ARCCA witnesses excluded from the new trial.
Read has already had a motion to dismiss the case denied before trial and another motion to dismiss two of the charges against her denied after the trial. She's appealed the latter ruling to Massachusetts' top court, then federal court.
