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It is finally showtime for the court case surrounding the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe in January 2022.
The trial has started for his then-girlfriend, Karen Read, who is accused of intentionally backing her Lexus SUV into O’Keefe after a drunken fight in the car and leaving him to die in the snow outside a fellow officer’s home, according to prosecutors.
Not only has Read pleaded not guilty to murder, her legal team argued Read was framed by people in the Canton, Massachusetts, home, as part of a top-to-bottom cover-up.
Those allegations are part of an ongoing federal investigation, which fueled the “Free Karen Read” side of a fiercely divided Boston suburb. Then came the October arrest of a controversial local blogger, who led rallies supporting Read.
Kearney was indicted on over a dozen felonies involving witness intimidation. He also served 60 days in jail for violating a protective order, but he has since been freed and is waiting for his own trial.
Two years have elapsed since Read was indicted by a grand jury, and it is finally time for a jury to decide if O’Keefe’s death was a domestic violence murder or consider whether it might have been part of an elaborate cover-up orchestrated by law enforcement and prosecutors.
The curtains opened with jury selection, which a local law professor said will be pivotal and challenging.
“The influence of media, social media, the sidebars with the turtle blogger. All the information that’s been going back and forth from the DA’s office and the defense team, I think it’s going to be a long road to pick an impartial jury,” Suffolk University Law Professor Christopher Dearborn told CBS News.
