04-04-2025
Karen Read takes double-jeopardy appeal to US Supreme Court
Read's lawyer, Martin Weinberg, declined to comment Thursday night due to the trial judge's order restricting lawyers from making statements about the case. The appeal was filed with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, according to
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'Read contends that the Double Jeopardy Clause's guarantee against successive prosecutions is no less fundamental than ... the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury and no less deserving of protection,' the petition said.
Reid, 45, of Mansfield, already has lost appeals with the state trial court, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and lower federal courts. Most recently, a
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The first trial lasted two months. After 30 hours of deliberations and a series of three notes from the jury to Judge Beverly J. Cannone saying they were at a hopeless impasse, the judge
In the weeks that followed, jurors came forward, telling Read's defense team they actually had agreed to acquit Read on two charges, murder and leaving the scene of a crash, and only remained split on a manslaughter charge.
Read has since sought to have her state murder charge and the leaving-the-scene charge thrown out on double jeopardy grounds, arguing that Cannone improperly declared the mistrial and jurors actually had acquitted Read of the two counts.
Thursday's legal filing mirrored those same arguments and pushed for permission to question the jurors about their verdict.
'Such inquiry in no way intrudes on the deliberative process of the jury,' Read's lawyers wrote. 'Such an inquiry instead honors the jury service which the trial court described as 'extraordinary' rather than rendering irrelevant the efforts of at least four jurors to disclose that there was not an impasse on all three counts, as contrasted to only one count.'
Tonya Alanez can be reached at
