Karen Read trial week 8 takeaways: Read's fate in hands of jury

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For the first time in weeks, lawyers were able to address jurors directly in the Karen Read retrial on Friday as they delivered their closing arguments. Hank Brennan, the lead prosecutor, and Alan Jackson, Read's lead defense attorney, took differing approaches in their closings, reflective of how each side approached the trial.
Jackson spoke first, going nearly 90 minutes as he hammered two key points: that there was no collision between Read's SUV and her boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O'Keefe, and that police failed to properly investigate the case.
'What if it wasn't the house of a Boston cop?' Jackson said. 'We can be certain they would've torn that house apart looking for answers."
He also leaned on the testimony of numerous experts, including the commonwealth's medical examiner, all of whom said O'Keefe's injuries weren't consistent with being hit by a car.
'Just look at John's arm,' he said. The prosecution 'couldn't find a medical expert who would say those were inconsistent with a dog bite or a scratch.'
Throughout Jackson's speech, index cards flashed on the courtroom TVs, each representing a key point.
As he concluded, Jackson told the jury to consider that stack of index cards. Each one represented reasonable doubt, and each one meant Read must be acquitted.
Brennan, though, leaned more on raw emotion: he opened and closed on O'Keefe himself. He was a man who tried to help everyone, Brennan said, and on the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, he was the one who needed help. It was only Read, he suggested, who could get O'Keefe help.
He also suggested to the jury that the data proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt, even though he admitted the prosecution didn't know exactly how the collision at the center of the case took place. Brennan pointed to the healthcare data from O'Keefe's phone, the plummeting temperature of his cell phone battery and the data from Read's Lexus SUV.
'The data shows John O'Keefe is not moving,' he said. 'The data is the data. You can't change it as much as you want to.'
Data is 'not subject to bias,' Brennan emphasized.
He closed with a photo of O'Keefe on the screen.
'John O'Keefe was a person, and he was murdered by Karen Read,' he said. 'Whether she meant to hit him or not.'
After eight weeks, dozens of witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, 12 jurors finally got the case and began their deliberations. The panel deliberated for only two hours on Friday before they were sent home for the weekend.
Here's what else you need to know from the eighth week of the trial.
As the retrial entered its final stretch this week, there were visible moments of escalating tension between the lawyers and even with judicial decisions.
Norfolk County prosecutors tried to block the defense from questioning one of their final witnesses — a forensic pathologist and former medical examiner — about her opinion that John O'Keefe's injuries were caused by dog bites.
The judge ultimately allowed the forensic pathologist, Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, to testify about the wounds coming from an animal, not from a dog specifically.
'I just think it's outrageous,' Alan Jackson, a defense attorney, told the judge, sounding exasperated.
There were barbs traded between attorneys throughout the week.
Robert Alessi, one of Read's attorneys, moved for a mistrial after a prosecutor mistakenly pointed to cuts in O'Keefe's sweatshirt — made by a state police technician — and implied they could have been caused by road rash.
'The Commonwealth has no case. They have no collision. They are desperate and trying to create evidence of specters of collision where the evidence doesn't support it,' Alessi said.
Jackson spent a good deal of time questioning a defense expert witness, Daniel Wolfe, about a test involving a crash dummy's right arm being struck at 29 mph.
Wolfe is an accident reconstructionist with the company ARCCA and he described a series of holes on the dummy's sweatshirt caused by road rash. There were also visible signs of road rash to the face and torso.
Wolfe said the damage to the dummy was inconsistent with the damage to O'Keefe. He also noted that the dummy's shoes stayed on his feet after impact. One of O'Keefe's shoes was found at the scene of 34 Fairview Road, the other stayed on his foot.
Jackson also projected a photograph from the SUV with a shattered back window after the dummy test. Wolfe stated it was 'inconsistent' with the damage to Read's SUV.
Read's lawyers pushed for a mistrial on Monday — the second time in a week.
Defense attorney Robert Alessi told Judge Beverly Cannone that the motion for a mistrial with prejudice was based on 'intentional misconduct' by the prosecution. Alessi accused a prosecutor of misleading jurors while questioning an accident reconstructionist about O'Keefe's sweatshirt.
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan questioned the defense's expert witness, Wolfe, about punctures to the back of O'Keefe's sweatshirt. Brennan pulled out the sweatshirt encased in a transparent display to ask Wolfe about damage to the back of the sweatshirt.
Alessi said the questions were misleading because Brennan knew the holes in question were made by a Massachusetts State Police criminalist, and could not have happened as a result of a collision.
The holes on the back were 'clearly, unequivocally, without doubt' caused by the cutting of a criminalist. 'Those holes in the back of the sweatshirt [have] nothing to do with any type of event on or about Jan. 29, 2022.'
'What could be more egregious?' Alessi asked. 'They picked the most opportune, sensitive time to pull this stunt. This is intentional, this is irremediable, this is on the key issue of this case, whether there was a collision at all.'
Brennan admitted to having made a mistake, but the judge denied the mistrial motion. She instead gave jurors an instruction telling them the holes in the sweatshirt came from a criminalist and 'they cannot consider' the holes as coming from 'the events' of Jan. 29, 2022.
Laposata, the forensic pathologist, testified that O'Keefe's arm injuries were 'very consistent' with an animal attack.
She then testified about X-rays that she reviewed of O'Keefe's chest, arm and legs. She said she did not see any defects to his right hand, and that the bones were intact without any breaks or fractures.
'It's a normal right arm,' Laposata said.
Then, at a later point, she said, 'The bones were 100 percent intact.'
An expert witness for the prosecution said during his testimony in a previous week that there were no X-rays of O'Keefe's arm that he reviewed.
The last witness of the trial, Andrew Rentschler, bolstered Laposata's opinions that O'Keefe's injuries were inconsistent with a car collision.
Rentschler is another ARCCA accident reconstructionist, and he said on Wednesday that O'Keefe's arm had 36 superficial abrasions on his right arm, which he terms a conservative estimate.
He said there would need to be 36 points of contact to piece the sweatshirt and the skin, but there were 'nine defects' on the right sleeve of his sweatshirt.
Rentscheler also criticized a test done by the prosecution's crash reconstructionists using blue paint transferred from a taillight onto the arm of an analyst.
The analyst did not take any measurements of where the blue paint extended on the man's arm and did not 'say with scientific certainty that that area of paint corresponds to where the abrasions are,' Rentschler said.
Brennan sought to undermine Rentschler's testimony by making him appear to jurors as cozy with the defense team.
Rentschler admitted to having eaten a ham sandwich during a lunch with defense lawyers after his testimony at the first trial.
Brennan asked if Rentschler was discussing the case and 'laughing it up a little bit' with the defense.
'Whatever was spoken about at the table, I'm sure I heard,' Rentschler said.
After Rentschler's testimony, the defense rested its case.
In an unexpected twist, Brennan decided against calling rebuttal witnesses. Earlier in the week, he'd indicated he wanted to recall an accident reconstructionist from Aperture, the company retained by prosecutors, and another expert to testify about dog DNA.
If Karen Read is convicted, what happens next?
Karen Read trial recap: No verdict reached, deliberations to resume Monday
Karen Read prosecutors intended to call witnesses in rebuttal. Why didn't they?
Karen Read trial: Lawyers hammer out jury instructions as retrial hurtles to a close
Karen Read trial: What to expect from charge conference on Thursday
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