By Abby Patkin
March 18, 2025 | 9:16 AM
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
Lawyers in the Karen Read murder case will kick off a marathon two-day legal saga Tuesday to tie up loose ends ahead of her retrial next month.
Dozens of outstanding motions remain, including a flurry of pretrial requests both sides filed over the last week. Many of them are motions in limine, which help determine the evidence, witnesses, and arguments the prosecution and defense will be allowed to present to the jury.
Read, 45, is charged in the January 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Prosecutors allege she was driving drunk following a night of bar-hopping and deliberately backed her SUV into O’Keefe while dropping him off at the Canton home of fellow Boston officer Brian Albert.
However, Read’s lawyers argue she was a “convenient outsider” framed in a law enforcement conspiracy to protect the Alberts, a well-connected local family. The defense has floated an alternate theory that O’Keefe entered the home for an afterparty and was beaten, attacked by the family’s dog, and ultimately dumped outside in the snow.
Read’s first trial ended with a hung jury last July. She is due to stand trial again next month. As the second trial inches nearer, prosecutors are once again seeking to bar Read’s team from raising a third-party culprit defense to blame someone else for O’Keefe’s death.
The defense, meanwhile, has asked Judge Beverly Cannone to keep certain witnesses out of the courtroom before and after they testify. Brian Albert and other witnesses, including his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe and his nephew Colin Albert, sat with members of O’Keefe’s family during closing arguments in last year’s trial.
Read’s lawyers are further asking Cannone to bar prosecutors and law enforcement from having contact with witnesses after they’ve begun their testimony. Another request seeks to bar Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey and the Massachusetts State Police from having contact with jurors.
The defense is also seeking to bar mention of an incident that happened during a group trip Read and O’Keefe took to Aruba over New Year’s Eve in 2021. During Read’s first trial, two of O’Keefe’s family friends, sisters Laura and Marietta “Etta” Sullivan, testified that Read angrily accused O’Keefe of cheating on her during the trip. Prosecutors allege Read killed O’Keefe in a drunken rage, pointing to the Aruba incident as evidence their relationship was in turmoil. However, defense attorneys say the incident isn’t relevant to Read’s murder case.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys have also filed dueling motions over whether to admit the results of a blood test Read took at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton the morning O’Keefe died. A former state forensic scientist previously testified that a retrograde analysis of the test results put Read’s blood alcohol content between 0.135% and 0.292% around the time prosecutors say O’Keefe was mortally wounded.
Prosecutors have also asked Cannone to reestablish the 200-foot buffer zone she set around Norfolk Superior Court during Read’s last trial. However, they’re requesting an extended buffer on one side of the courthouse after they say protesters could still be heard inside during jury deliberations. Prosecutors are also asking for an enforcement mechanism to ensure the buffer does its job.
“Where a person is believed to have violated the buffer zone provision, and has refused requests to comply, law enforcement personnel should be authorized to use reasonable physical force and to arrest that person to ensure compliance,” they wrote in their motion.
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