Karen Learn homicide trial enters protection section as staff prepares to battle allegations

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Having trouble? Click here. Karen Read’s defense team of heavy-hitting attorneys is able to start tearing down the prosecution’s homicide case in opposition to her after the state rested its case this week.

Learn is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, outdoors an acquaintance's home occasion simply after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.

The prosecution alleges that Read struck O’Keefe along with her 2021 Lexus SUV in a drunken ragme after a night of combating earlier than leaving him to freeze to dying within the entrance yard of 34 Fairview Highway.

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Karen Learn speaks along with her protection lawyer, Alan Jackson, throughout her retrial in Norfolk Superior Courtroom, Thursday, Might 29, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Picture/Mark Stockwell, Pool)

Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan rested the state's case on Thursday, almost two months after jury choice started. Brennan’s closing witness, Aperture crash reconstructionist Dr. Judson Welcher spent three days on the stand offering testimony on his findings supporting the state’s allegations that Learn fatally struck O’Keefe along with her car.

He pointed to his personal experimentation utilizing a Lexus taillight and moist paint as an instance how O’Keefe might have sustained the accidents to his arm, and he mentioned {that a} "glancing" blow from the car might clarify why the sufferer did not have typical car-strike accidents.

"Should you impression the hand with a 1-inch slim steel bar, that is lots totally different than when you have a broad, plastic taillight or rear physique panel," Welcher mentioned. "So when you will have distributed masses, you may take rather more."

Learn’s protection staff is about to start presenting their case on Friday as attorneys Alan Jackson, David Yannetti and Robert Alessi look to sow doubt round the state’s allegations , with Yannetti considered because the strongest member of Learn’s staff by specialists.

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Karen Learn seems in Norfolk County Superior Courtroom for a pretrial listening to. She is charged with the homicide of her boyfriend, John O'Keefe. (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe by way of Getty Pictures)

Pictures of an accident reconstruction take a look at by Dr. Judson Welcher are proven throughout the Karen Learn retrial at Norfolk Superior Courtroom on Might 28, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger by way of AP, Pool)

"David Yannetti is the perfect trial lawyer within the case," retired Massachusetts Superior Courtroom Choose and Boston School legislation professor Jack Lu informed Fox Information Digital, "with the potential exception of Brennan."

Yannetti is a seasoned criminal defense attorney and has been with Learn since earlier than her first trial.

"He has the vary that Mr. Brennan may lack," Lu mentioned. "Brennan, with all his spectacular expertise, largely has one velocity, effectively, two speeds. Yannetti, an award-winning advocate since legislation faculty, has seen all of it and fights for a place from which the protection can presumably salvage issues."

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Protection lawyer David Yannetti listens to testimony throughout the trial of Karen Learn in Norfolk Superior Courtroom, Might 16, 2025. (Mark Stockwell/The Solar Chronicle, AP Pool)

The protection will look to dismantle the state’s case, which regularly pointed to Learn’s interviews with numerous information retailers, addressing the general public in her personal phrases.

"So I assumed, ‘Might I've run him over?’" Learn mentioned in a 2024 interview with Investigation Discovery. "Did he attempt to get me as I used to be leaving and I didn’t comprehend it?"

Learn’s authorized staff insists her car by no means got here involved with O’Keefe whereas pointing to the likelihood that one thing or another person was answerable for the police officer’s death .

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"After which once I employed David Yannetti, I requested him these questions," Learn mentioned in the identical clip. "The evening of Jan. 29, David, what if I ran his foot over? Or what if I clipped him within the knee and he handed out or went to look after himself and threw up or handed out? And David mentioned, ‘Yeah, then you will have some component of culpability.'"

Lu believes the first aim for the protection staff ought to be to humanize Learn in a approach that paints her in a good mild to the jurors whereas taking goal at an alleged cover-up scheme by the Massachusetts Police Division.

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"The prosecutor has made her right into a self-absorbed caricature," Lu informed Fox Information Digital, including, "They have to get into the hatred of her by [former investigator] Michael Proctor."

Proctor is on the witness listing, but it surely stays unclear whether or not the protection will put him on the stand. Prosecutors didn't name him this time round after his testimony within the first trial noticed jurors shaking their heads as they heard his inappropriate texts about Learn in court docket. The case led to a mistrial, and he misplaced his job days earlier than the second trial kicked off.

Learn has pleaded not responsible. If convicted, she faces the potential for life in jail for probably the most critical cost of second-degree murder .

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"Proper now Ms. Learn’s authorized case is badly wounded," Lu mentioned. "Mr. Yannetti has the power to allure the jury, battle the decide as wanted, current the protection witnesses – a few of whom are hostile – and in closing, encourage the jury."