A jury in Massachusetts acquitted Karen Read of murder and manslaughter charges on Wednesday, ending a legal saga that has gripped the Boston area since the death of Ms. Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, in January 2022.
Prosecutors had accused Ms. Read, 45, of intentionally hitting Mr. O’Keefe with her S.U.V. after an argument, and then leaving him to die in a blizzard.
Ms. Read tearfully embraced her attorneys after the verdict was announced in a courthouse in Dedham, Mass., as the cheers of hundreds of her supporters could be heard outside the courtroom.
The jury of seven women and five men, who began deliberating last Friday, convicted Ms. Read on one minor charge, operating a vehicle under the influence.
They delivered their verdict almost a year after an earlier trial in the case ended in a mistrial. That jury was unable to reach a consensus after five days of deliberation.
The case attracted a fervent following far beyond Boston, made up of true-crime fanatics and others who were fascinated by the elaborate theory advanced by Ms. Read’s lawyers. They argued that Officer O’Keefe, 46, had been killed at a late-night house party in Canton, Mass., that was hosted by another Boston police officer, and that corrupt investigators covered up the truth and framed Ms. Read for the murder.
Ms. Read, who had worked at an investment firm and taught college finance classes, had pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. If convicted, she would have faced sentences of life in prison for the murder charge, five to 20 years in prison for manslaughter and 10 years for leaving the scene.
The penalty for a first conviction of operating under the influence could include up to 2.5 years in state prison, but is typically limited to probation.
Judge Beverly J. Cannone had briefly called court back into session around 2:30 p.m. to report that during the lunch break, the jury had notified the court that it had reached a verdict, but then said moments later that it had not. After about 15 more minutes, the jury said again that it had a verdict.
Talk of the trial became unavoidable in Massachusetts, exhausting some people while enthralling others, who picked apart the evidence endlessly at social gatherings and in Facebook groups. A constellation of factors fueled their fascination: the relative rarity of a woman accused of murder; the murky circumstances of the death; the small-town power dynamics at play; and the allure of conspiracy theories for those who are inclined to mistrust law enforcement.
Testimony in the retrial, which began in April, closely resembled that of the first, with a few new elements. Prosecutors again called witnesses who described a cracked taillight on Ms. Read’s S.U.V., and a “debris field” of broken taillight fragments found in the yard where Mr. O’Keefe’s body was discovered outside the house in Canton. They again played angry voice mail messages that Ms. Read left for her boyfriend that night, and video clips of her drinking cocktails at a bar before she drove Mr. O’Keefe to the party.
The state also called several technical experts who testified about movement and temperature data that was obtained from Officer O’Keefe’s cellphone, as well as data obtained from Ms. Read’s vehicle. Lawyers for the prosecution said those two data trails proved that after Mr. O’Keefe got out of her car at the party, Ms. Read accelerated in reverse and struck him, causing him to fall and suffer a skull fracture.
“She could have driven home — they could have talked about it the next day,” Hank Brennan, a lawyer for the prosecution, said in his closing argument, referring to the fight the couple had en route to the party in Canton.
Instead, he continued, “she takes a 6,000-pound Lexus and she makes a decision — she steps on the gas after banging it into reverse.”
Prosecution experts testified that Officer O’Keefe’s phone did not record any movement after 12:32 a.m. that night, and that the phone’s temperature steadily dropped over the next several hours. Prosecutors used that evidence to rebut defense claims that he was attacked by people at the party.
“He’s not at a party; he’s not in a fight,” Mr. Brennan said. “If he was in a fight, his cellphone would be moving.”
Defense lawyers kept returning to the fact that the original lead investigator in the case was fired by the Massachusetts State Police for sending unethical and offensive text messages about Ms. Read. The defense claimed that the police went easy on the people who attended the party in Canton that night, and that the hosts’ and guests’ personal ties to local law enforcement had protected them from searches and questions that might have turned up incriminating evidence.
“What if it wasn’t the home of a Boston cop?” Alan Jackson, a lawyer for Ms. Read, said in his closing argument. “We can be certain that investigators would have torn that house apart to get answers.”
Mr. Jackson suggested that the shards of broken taillight had been planted on the lawn by corrupt investigators, and that the presence of the shards in the snowy yard was not enough to prove that they had been broken had been broken by the S.U.V. striking Mr. O’Keefe.
The defense also maintained that injuries to Mr. O’Keefe’s arm had come from a dog attack inside the house during the party.
“There was no blood, no skin, no tissue, no DNA on the taillight that the Commonwealth says sliced into John O’Keefe’s arm,” he said. “Where is it? Where is the DNA? The only way this is possible is if it never touched his arm — and it didn’t. A dog did it.”
Ms. Read found Officer O’Keefe unresponsive in front of the house in Canton around dawn on the morning after the party. She has said that she frantically searched for him after waking up on his couch around 4 a.m. and realizing that he was not there. The officer, who had severe head injuries and hypothermia, was pronounced dead shortly before 8 o’clock that morning.
Ms. Read was arrested three days later.
Supporters who were convinced she was innocent gathered outside the courthouse daily throughout both trials, many of them wearing pink — which they said was Ms. Read’s favorite color — and carrying signs demanding, “Free Karen Read.”
Maya Shwayder contributed reporting from Dedham, Mass.
