Why the Karen Read retrial ended differently this time

Editor’s note, June 18, 2025, 4:15 pm ET: On June 18, Karen Read was found not guilty of second-degree murder, and found guilty of drunk driving in John O’Keefe’s death. The story below was originally published on May 3, 2025. It’s the same courtroom, the same judge, and nearly all of the same players — but it’s a whole different atmosphere inside Norfolk County Superior Court in Massachusetts, for the retrial of Karen Read, who is accused of murdering her boyfriend John O’Keefe. Last year’s explosive trial divided the city of Boston, and eventually the entire country, over the question of whether Read backed into and ran over O’Keefe in the early hours of January 29, 2022 — or whether O’Keefe, who was headed to a late-night house party in suburban Canton full of police officers like himself, had in fact been killed inside the house, in front of witnesses who then staged the scene outside in the snow. While that might seem like a question that should be easy to answer, in court it was anything but, thanks mainly to a botched police investigation led by now-former state trooper Michael Proctor. Proctor’s conduct shifted an alleged case of deadly domestic violence into a public referendum on Boston police corruption: He made reprehensible comments about Read in texts with his co-workers, including misogynistic slurs, and seemed to view her as guilty before he did any investigation — an investigation in which he allegedly lied and obscured evidence. His testimony was so damning for the prosecution in the first trial that he was ultimately fired, a fate which almost never befalls troopers in Massachusetts. By contrast, Read was a ready-made cause celèbre, a “girl next door” college professor turned outspoken advocate for her own innocence. Depending on your perspective, she was either an innocent victim of the system or a manipulative femme fatale — and audiences were eager to pick a side. The police mishandling of the case, along with a lot of arguably weird behavior from the party attendees, gave the defense plenty of room to argue its conspiracy case in earnest. The result was a mistrial — though according to four of the jurors, the jury actually wasn’t all that divided. They were reportedly torn on the weakest of the charges — leaving the scene of a fatal accident — but had reportedly intended to find Read not guilty on the main charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. They inaccurately told the judge that they were deadlocked on all the charges instead. That series of fiascos set the stage for the current retrial, and the addition of special prosecutor Hank Brennan, who now has the advantage of knowing most of what the defense’s arguments will be in advance. Still, the prosecution has to overcome the specter of Proctor, as well as what the defense, and Read’s legions of supporters, claim as reasonable doubt pertaining to nearly every piece of evidence in the case. “The conventional wisdom is that the second trial is better for the prosecution,” Mark Geragos, an attorney giving his perspective as a spectator to the retrial, told News Nation. “I don’t think that’s the case here.” Let’s break down what’s new, what’s changed, and what’s still contentious in a case that continues to be a hotbed of controversy. All the same evidence, all the same conflict Every single aspect of Read’s retrial is up for debate — including whether it should be happening at all. Her defense team appealed the retrial all the way up to the US Supreme Court, arguing that since jurors in the first trial had reportedly reached a unanimous “not guilty” verdict on the two main charges, retrying her was double jeopardy. The problem? The jurors never officially recorded that verdict. The Supreme Court rejected Read’s petition just as the retrial was getting underway. And so yet another jury has to try and make sense of the bizarre case details that complicated the first trial. They remain as confounding as ever: * The fact that the owner of the home where the party was happening, a retired police officer named Brian Albert, never came outside at any time that morning to see what was happening on his own lawn. * The problem that O’Keefe’s body has no sign of the injuries expected from a car collision, including an absence of lower-body bruising where the car would presumably have hit him. * The deep scratches on his arm, which the defense alleges are dog bites from an attack by the Alberts’ German shepherd that occurred inside the house. * The largely unexplained series of calls between several of the party attendees throughout the night before the discovery of O’Keefe’s body, despite the fact that not a single party attendee claims to have seen the body on the lawn as they were leaving. * The damaged tail light, which may have been broken during the night, or may (as the defense alleges) have been smashed at some point in the days afterward, once Proctor had custody of Read’s SUV. Even the facts that seem straightforward and damning at first glance are, upon closer scrutiny, anything but. The search that witness and party attendee Jen McCabe allegedly made on her phone in the wee hours of the morning for “hos long to die in cold” would be a bombshell for the defense, if only the experts could agree on the timestamp. If she made it at 2:27 am, when the browser tab was opened, that would mean she knew O’Keefe was on the lawn hours before anyone claims to have seen him there. But if she made it when both she and the prosecution expert claim she did, at 6:23 am, that would come after she and Read discovered the body. Then there’s the mysterious fitness tracking data that officially recorded O’Keefe climbing stairs shortly before his phone stopped moving, around 12:24 am. That might be a strong indicator that O’Keefe went inside the house, as Read claims, before his activity suddenly halted. Except the prosecutor’s forensic analyst claims that the phone data is inaccurate, and that a more likely explanation is that instead of climbing stairs, O’Keefe was riding in a car as it was going up a hill, likely traveling to the Albert house shortly before he stopped moving. The prosecution’s strongest argument this time around is arguably the recorded temperature of O’Keefe’s cellphone battery, which they claim began to rapidly fall in temperature shortly after O’Keefe stopped moving — surely a sign he was outside in the snow, right? Wrong, according to the prosecution’s own analyst, who admitted on the witness stand under cross-examination that the phone could have still been inside the house while its temperature was dropping. Surely nothing could be more straightforward than Read herself, declaring to anyone and everyone, “I hit him, I hit him,” at the scene, right? Not according to the litany of actual statements given by witnesses, which have varied wildly in consistency and accuracy about who Read spoke these words to, how many times she said them, and whether she was speaking declaratively or out of panic, asking, “Did I hit him?” or “Could I have hit him?” or doing some combination of all of the above. And, of course, there’s the shoddy investigation itself — conducted during a blizzard by officers using solo cups and plastic bags instead of evidence bags and forensic technicians. That grave mistake was overseen by Proctor, who seemed to want to wrap the case up as quickly as possible, and, as his own text messages indicate, without involving the Albert family. Could the lawyers make the difference in this case? Given that the case itself remains a trainwreck, what, then, is new? Mainly the special prosecutor. Brennan, an attorney most well-known for defending Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, comes across as dweebish in the courtroom but has a track record of hard-hitting and effective trial tactics.He won an acquittal for ice skater Nancy Kerrigan’s brother Mark Kerrigan in the 2010 death of their father, as well as controversial acquittals in two rape cases for disgraced former attorney Gary Zerola. The defense is mostly the same. Attorney Alan Jackson, who famously prosecuted Phil Spector, then went on to represent Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, has handled the opening statements and most of the cross-examinations himself. Yet the defense isn’t without its own potential new lawyerly ace card: Victoria George, a Princeton-educated lawyer, who was chosen as an alternate juror for Read’s first trial and sat through most of it before being dismissed. (She has implied her dismissal alongside that of another juror were signs of Judge Beverly Cannone’s bias against Read; the actual reasons for their dismissal have never been made public.) After the first trial concluded, George reached out to Read’s defense team and signed on to assist as counsel — and that assistance could be invaluable, given that she experienced the case being presented to her in real time by the lawyers, as jurors are likely experiencing it now. “It is unbelievable, the insight you get from the jurors after they have sat on [a jury],” Geragos told News Nation about his own experiences working with previous jurors like George. The defense may well need all the help it can get to counter what seems to be the prosecution’s stripped-down approach to the retrial. Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally, who oversaw the first trial, is still working with Brennan on the retrial, but so far Brennan has been handling most of the presentation and cross-examination himself, focusing mainly on forensic data that he claims is irrefutable, commonsense evidence that Read did it. (It’s also the evidence least likely to be tainted by Proctor himself.) The prosecution has also been using Read’s own interviews with media, given during and after the first trial, against her. Over the defense’s repeated objections, Cannone has allowed clips to be shown from Read’s interviews with outlets like 20/20 and Dateline that include her discussing her initial fear that she hit O’Keefe. Brennan believes they show Read’s “consciousness of guilt,” but the jury could potentially be seeing the clips as indicating her confusion over what happened. [Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILusx6mXwMw] The defense in turn has largely focused on undermining witness testimony by highlighting changing memories and inconsistencies across their statements given in police interviews, at the grand jury, and the previous trial. Another theme the defense has called out repeatedly is the close-knit Canton community of which O’Keefe was a part; everyone from the police to the first responders in this case seems to know everyone else. Read, the defense insists, was an outsider to the insular group that is now accusing her. Cannone has limited the defense’s ability to point to members of that community as potential alternate suspects in O’Keefe’s death — meaning the emphasis on a mysterious group conspiracy that underpinned the defense at Read’s first trial is largely absent. Instead, the defense has leaned heavily on the “dog bite” theory, promising to call a forensics expert to testify that the gouges on O’Keefe’s arm came from an attack by the Alberts’ dog, Chloe, who was abruptly rehomed not long after his death. It likely won’t be clear what an impact these changes by both sides will have on the trial until Proctor, who is listed as a potential witness for both sides, takes the stand. Still, his presence looms over the court. Some lawyers watching the trial have criticized Brennan for not confronting the albatross of Proctor’s role in the investigation directly in his opening statement, leaving an opening for Jackson to lead with it in his own. Jackson described Proctor as a “malignancy” infecting the entire case. Another unexpected moment from Brennan’s opening statement came when he remarked casually, while recounting the experience of a firefighter at the accident scene, that Read’s claims to have hit the victim “didn’t reconcile with the injuries” — an extremely surprising admission for the prosecutor to make. That even the prosecutor himself can’t help introducing ambiguity into his own arguments reminds us what a frustrating standard of proof “reasonable doubt” can be. As with everything else about Karen Read and her case, it’s in the eye of the beholder.

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Why the Karen Read retrial ended differently this time