Jury skepticism of experts could determine outcome in Karen Read murder trial: former judge
Whenever there's a battle of the experts, it's the jurors who hold the winning hand, according to a retired Massachusetts judge.
And that's shaping up to be the case in Karen Read's retrial on murder charges in the death of her former boyfriend, 46-year-old Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe.
Read, 45, is accused of hitting him with an SUV and leaving outside a house party at 34 Fairview Road in Canton, Massachusetts, as he died of a skull fracture and hypothermia during a blizzard on Jan. 29, 2022.
Dr. Daniel Wolfe, a director at the ARCCA crash reconstruction firm, testified that the results of numerous tests he conducted to try and reconstruct the alleged crash that killed O'Keefe came back with "inconsistent" results.
But special prosecutor Hank Brennan tore into the validity of his methods during cross-examination, noting he used a dummy that was significantly smaller than O'Keefe, alternated between different types of dummy arms without noting that under direct examination and conducted only one test at each speed rather than multiple tests to check for consistent results.
A key moment in his testimony came not while discussing his findings, but when Brennan asked him about something Read said in a video clip played earlier in the trial, according to Jack Lu, a retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge and Boston College law professor.
"There's Brennan's theory – the taillight 'impaled' [O'Keefe] on the nose," he told Fox News Digital. "Read picked glass out of [his] nose, and [his] nose bled – from her video statement."
Brennan played video from one of Wolfe's accident reconstructions that showed plastic fragments flying away from the vehicle after impacting a crash dummy's arm.
"When the taillight is shattered and it spreads through the air, does it have the potential to impale a person, for example, on their nose?" Brennan asked.
"I think that would be unlikely," Wolfe replied.
As part of the prosecution's case, Brennan played a clip of Read telling an interviewer she pulled a "piece of glass" out of O'Keefe's nose and that it started bleeding.
Wolfe's task has been to discredit the prosecution's core allegation that Read slammed into O'Keefe in reverse with her 2021 Lexus LX 570 SUV and left him to die on the ground in a blizzard on Jan. 29, 2022.
"Juries have great powers of observation, and a fundamental depth of experience seldom seen in American life," Lu told Fox News Digital. "Partially because of how many jurors there are. I predict that the jury will conclude that both accident reconstructionists' conclusions are not worthy of belief in a jury trial."
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The defense is also aiming to sow reasonable doubt in the prosecution's crash experts, Dr. Judson Welcher and Shanon Burgess from a firm called Aperture.
Welcher testified last week that he believes "[O'Keefe's injuries are] consistent with being struck by a Lexus and also contacting a hard surface, such as frozen ground." Wolfe found that the injuries were inconsistent when stacked up against the damage to Read's SUV as well as the damage to O'Keefe's clothing – which prosecutors allege had fragments of taillight plastic embedded in it.
Lu said that he expects jury instructions to include a note that the experts don't decide the facts – jurors do.
"Juries are not in the least bit cowed by experts," he said. "To the contrary, they view them with skepticism."
Especially "hired guns," he added.
Jurors will be looking at the case as a whole, but while Lu said he believes Brennan scored a victory on the day, the defense has a significant advantage.
"The defense need not prove anything; they merely must establish reasonable doubt," said Mark Bederow, a New York City defense lawyer who is representing Canton blogger and Read ally Aidan Kearney. "But over the course of a few hours, Dr. Wolfe cast serious doubt by methodically dismantling the key premise of the prosecution case – through multiple scientific examinations and effective video he offered support for his opinion that the damage to the taillight was not consistent with the collision alleged by the prosecution."
Read's team is expected to rest their case next week. She could face up to life in prison if convicted of the top charge.
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