Prosecutors rest case at Karen Read trial

Boston Globe

5 days ago

'So I thought, could I have run him over?' Read told the interviewer. 'Did he try to get [to] me as I was leaving, and I didn't know it?'
She said the music and heat were 'blasting'
inside the SUV
and she had the wipers on.
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'Did he come and hit the back of my car and I hit him in the knee and he's drunk and passed out and asphyxiated or something?' Read said. 'And then when I hired [lawyer] David Yannetti I asked him those questions. ... 'David, what if I ran his foot over'' or struck him in the knee and 'he passed out.'
Yannetti told her under that scenario, 'You have some element of culpability,' she said.
Read, 45, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death.
Prosecutors allege she backed her Lexus SUV in a drunken rage into O'Keefe, a Boston police officer, after dropping him off outside the Canton home around 12:30 a.m., following a night of bar-hopping.
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Her lawyers say she was framed and that O'Keefe entered the home, owned at the time by a fellow Boston officer, where he was fatally beaten and possibly mauled by a German shepherd before his body was planted on the lawn.
Read's first trial ended in July with a hung jury, and she remains free on bail.
Before jurors viewed the interview clip Thursday, Judson Welcher, a biomechanical engineer and crash reconstructionist, completed his cross-examination by Read attorney Robert Alessi.
Alessi spent much of the morning pressing Welcher about laser-scan testing he conducted at O'Keefe's driveway in October. The testing was done in an effort to determine whether Read's right taillight could've been damaged when she lightly backed her SUV into O'Keefe's parked Chevy Traverse around 5 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, as she left to go look for him.
Welcher said his testing revealed that while the Lexus and Traverse did make contact, the Lexus's taillight remained about an inch away from the Traverse.
Alessi showed a photo from one of Welcher's slides that appears to show Read's taillight by the Traverse, with no daylight between the vehicles.
Alessi asked if the photo shows the taillight actually touching the Traverse, and Welcher said it does not. Alessi also asked if the depiction in the slide didn't show Read's taillight 'jutting out,' as a separate photo did.
'It does,' Welcher said of his slide. 'Those are actually more on the side of the vehicle. You can't see them in this image.'
Welcher said the security camera in October was positioned slightly more to the right than the January 2022 camera that O'Keefe had installed at the time. He said he and his team accounted for the discrepancies and 'corrected' them in the report.
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Before Welcher returned to the stand, without the jury present, Alessi argued that he should be allowed to ask him about a key 'Techstream' event recorded by Read's Lexus that Welcher said indicates she drove her SUV in reverse on Fairview Road with the accelerator pressed down 74 percent, reaching a speed of nearly 24 miles per hour.
Techstream events refer to sudden movements such as abrupt stops or putting a vehicle into a reverse.
Alessi told Judge Beverly J. Cannone that a report from State Police Trooper Joseph Paul, a crash reconstructionist, is 'problematic' for the prosecution's narrative.
'If you work backwards from his key cycles [for the Lexus], you end up with' the reversal maneuver 'being not in front of 34 Fairview, but it ends up when the Lexus is in the possession of the state.'
Read's SUV was towed from her parents' home in Dighton late on the afternoon of Jan. 29, 2022, and brought to a Canton police garage for processing.
Brennan, the prosecutor, countered that the defense was 'trying to pit the inadmissible opinion of a non-testifying witness against a testifying witness.'
'They want the jury to hear their perspective that a past witness had confusion in their analysis, but they don't want to call the witness,' he said, referring to Paul.
Cannone ultimately ruled that Alessi couldn't ask Welcher about the issues related to Paul's findings.
The defense will begin presenting its case to the jury Friday at 9:30 a.m. Cannone said she would speak with the attorneys outside the jury's presence at 9 a.m..
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The trial is 'ahead of schedule,' Cannone said.
Material from prior Globe stories was used.
Travis Andersen can be reached at