Accused murderer Karen Read suffered a devastating blow in her effort to get charges against her dropped when a federal judge ruled on Thursday that retrying her for her police officer boyfriend’s death would not amount to double jeopardy.
Read, 44, had petitioned a federal court to toss charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident for the January 29, 2022 death of her boyfriend John O’Keefe – citing jurors’ recent comments that they unanimously agreed to acquit her on the charges, according to NBC Boston.
Her attorneys also asked that the federal court at least bring in the jurors who have made such comments for questioning, to find out whether they had, in fact, acquitted her.
But Judge Dennis Saylor disagreed, ruling that comments the jurors have made since the trial’s end in July do not qualify as a verdict, meaning ‘as a matter of federal constitutional law, [Read] was not actually acquitted of any of the relevant offenses’ and therefore retrying her would not amount to double jeopardy.
He went on to call any hearing of the former jurors ‘probably unlawful and certainly ill-advised,’ noting that even if it were to be held, their comments would not qualify as an acquittal under state law.
The ruling comes just weeks before Read is set to face a second murder trial.
She has been accused of murdering O’Keefe after a night out, but she instead claimed he was beaten by those inside the house his body was found on the front lawn of.
Karen Read, 44, had petitioned a federal court to toss charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident for the January 29, 2022 death of her boyfriend John O’Keefe
She has been accused of murdering O’Keefe after a night out, but she instead claimed he was beaten by those inside the house his body was found on the front lawn of
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
