Are you following the Karen Read murder trial?

I'm laying low being in a slow minded mode due to noise and or air quality today. I want to see what happens Tuesday. IDK why Karen googled hldittdithe snow seemingly. I will leave a song by Iron Butterfly and marvel of the vocal ability to sing My Mirage! The last surviving member Doug Engle just died. Up and at it Tuesday to add more after the TV/radio trial!

At around 6 a.m. on a snowy January day in 2022, a sleepy residential street in Canton was ablaze with the blue lights of police cruisers, soon joined by an ambulance and fire truck as one of the three women surrounding the body of a Boston Police officer screamed and wailed.

When John O’Keefe was rushed away by ambulance to Brockton’s Good Samaritan Medical Center, where he would soon be pronounced dead, local police took the initial steps to collect evidence for a case that would ultimately be the investigative responsibility of the Massachusetts State Police unit assigned to the Norfolk DA’s office.

Over the course of the trial where Karen Read has defended herself since April 29 against charges including second-degree murder in the death of O’Keefe, the forensic evidence has trickled out among descriptions of the fateful Friday night into Saturday morning, Jan. 29, 2022, when O’Keefe would die.

“It’s a fascinating trial, it’s grabbed everyone’s attention across the country,” said Boston defense attorney William D. Kickham, one of the two experts the Herald spoke with to analyze what has been presented after four weeks of trial. “It’s an amalgam of jealousy, possible lies, possible sex, a number of human behaviors that combine to create a very compelling story.”

Chris Dearborn, a Boston defense attorney for three decades and a clinical law professor at Suffolk University Law School, said the police’s handling of the physical evidence in the case is “a ripe area for cross-examination and argument for the defense.”

“You have all the weird stuff with the texts, and the love interests and the oddities with the forensic evidence and the oddities with the cell phones,” he said. “There’s enough here that may not add up and give the jury pause. It just depends on whether or not that gives them enough pause for reasonable doubt and acquittal.”

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Blood red SOLO cups
“Nothing about the scene was standard,” said Canton Police Lt. Paul Gallagher, who arrived at the scene along with the sun and took control following the initial witness statements and O’Keefe’s removal by ambulance.

He testified on the fifth day of trial, May 6, that he chose to use a leaf blower to combat the falling snow and remove layers of it to get to any evidence below.

He said he saw pink droplets that became redder as he removed more snow — O’Keefe’s blood. He didn’t have any actual evidence collection tools so he retrieved a set of red SOLO plastic cups — from a sealed bag, he stressed — from the home of a fellow officer who lived nearby. Gallagher collected the red snow in the cups, where it would thaw into a bloody mix.

Those cups then at some point were collected into a Stop & Shop grocery bag, as the officers who took the stand said they had to improvise at the scene. Ample portions of cross-examination of the officers targeted the storage methods and that the bag was seen within feet of Read’s Lexus SUV, which defense attorneys said could lead to cross-contamination.

“The fact that they used red SOLO cups ostensibly from an unopened package doesn’t change the calculus for me,” Dearborn said. “We think of college kids drinking beer and playing drinking games, that’s what we use red SOLO cups for.”

“I do appreciate that sometimes police need to be creative under pressure, but they have to expect to be thoroughly challenged by the defense, especially in a homicide case,” he added. “The general principle here is the trial that never ends". This post was edited by CosmicWunderkind at May 26, 2024 6:40 PM MDT