Karen Read was this week acquitted of murdering her boyfriend in a Dedham, Massachusetts courtroom.
The case gained national attention in part due to several instances of bad behavior on the part of the prosecutors and the Massachusetts State Police.
A fairly neutral summary of the case can be found here:
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/karen-read-trial-timeline-john-okeefe/Myself, I did not see the prosecutors make the case that Read had killed her boyfriend Boston Police officer John O'Keefe.
The prosecution claimed that Read had hit O'Keefe with her SUV somehow throwing his body approximately thirty feet from the driveway and about twenty feet from Fairview Road. The claim is that Read's SUV
accelerated to around 20mph from a dead stop on icy snow to hit O'Keefe while the SUV was in reverse.
Read was at the time drunk and two to four times over the legal limit yet the Massachusetts prosecutors claim she was able to make her SUV perform in reverse with precision and with a skill that most sober people could not replicate in those same conditions.
O'Keefe suffered two black eyes from getting sideswiped by an SUV? The prosecution's explanation for this reportedly required Riverdance levels of choreography. Federal investigators countered the state narrative clearly stating that O'Keefe's injuries were not consistent with the damage seen on Read's SUV.
The prosecution at the outset of the trial wanted a gag order on the defense all while the prosecution was trying the case in the media.
State Police were present in Dedham to provide security to the courthouse and during the course of the trial they openly retaliated against reporters who doubted the state's case and they openly retaliated against passersby who said "Free Karen Read" or who had t-shirts that said the same thing. One You Tube video shows a State Police trooper blatantly retaliating against a reporter who had just concluded a cordial conversation with a different trooper. The First Amendment lawsuits will be forthcoming.
I could go on but IMHO what happened here was a bunch of drunken Massachusetts cops got into a brawl and beat up O'Keefe who then was left to die on the front yard of 34 Fairview Road. The cops then constructed a narrative to cover up what had happened.
And the jury, God bless them, did not buy it.
