Karen Learn trial witness challenges taillight proof in Boston cop dying case

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Karen Read's defense workforce is trying to construct on momentum yesterday from a shock police witness who testified that her taillight was much less broken when he helped seize it with a warrant than it seems in images taken after it arrived on the Canton Police Division, the place authorities first towed it.

Taillight fragments weren't discovered on the crime scene till later, too, and her protection's implication is that they might have been planted there.

Wednesday marks the twenty seventh day of Learn's retrial on homicide and different fees within the January 2022 dying of her then-boyfriend, Boston cop John O'Keefe.

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Karen Learn listens to testimony throughout her homicide trial in Norfolk Superior Court docket in Dedham, Mass., Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald by way of AP, Pool)

She is accused of hitting him along with her 2021 Lexus SUV and leaving the scene, the place he died with head trauma and indicators of hypothermia. The protection says no collision occurred and one thing or another person brought on his accidents.

On Tuesday, Dighton Police Sgt. Nicholas Barros testified that when he arrived at Learn's mother and father' home to assist state police confiscate the automobile, fewer items of taillight have been lacking from the cracked taillight.

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Dighton Police Sgt. Nicholas Barros makes use of his fingers to point the scale of the lacking tail gentle fragment whereas testifying in the course of the Karen Learn homicide retrial at Norfolk Superior Court docket Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Libby O'Neill/The Boston Herald by way of AP, Pool)

He mentioned {that a} picture of Learn's SUV taken on the Canton Police Division's sallyport – a safe storage – did "completely not" present the taillight in the identical situation it was in when he noticed it within the driveway.

Barros shocked the courtroom when he testified for the commonwealth throughout Learn's first trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury final 12 months. This time, he was a protection witness.

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Officer John O’Keefe poses for his official headshot. O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Reed, is at present on trial for homicide after he was discovered lifeless exterior of a Massachusetts dwelling in January 2022. (Boston Police Division)

"He was a devastating witness who has the [district attorney's] case on life assist," mentioned Mark Bederow, a New York City -based protection lawyer who's carefully following the case.

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He mentioned particular prosecutor Hank Brennan performed an "glorious" cross-examination, displaying Barros and the jury photographs of Learn's taillight taken over the course of the day, earlier than police took her SUV, however protection lawyer Alan Jackson carried out equally nicely on redirect questioning.

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A photograph of Karen Learn's SUV, parked within the Canton Police Division's sallyport, is projected throughout her homicide retrial displaying items lacking from the correct, rear taillight, in Norfolk Superior Court docket, Monday, Could 12, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe by way of AP, Pool)

"The sum complete is that Barros is 100% unequivocal: the taillight he noticed on January 29 was not wherever close to as destroyed as when the [Massachusetts State Police] had it," he mentioned.

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Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts protection lawyer who can also be following the case, referred to as Barros' testimony a "bombshell" and mentioned the shock in trial 1 was "a transparent Brady violation" – referring to a rule that prosecutors should share exculpatory proof with the protection.

"The truth that a police officer drove to the Omni Lodge to fulfill with the protection workforce of a defendant on trial for homicide clearly signifies he needed to inform his story," she informed Fox Information Digital.

Dr. Judson Welcher , an knowledgeable for the prosecution, defined to jurors how he discovered that O'Keefe appeared to have been struck within the arm by the again nook of Learn's SUV earlier than he fell to the bottom and fractured the again of his cranium.

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Christina Hanley, an analyst with the state police's crime lab, testified that investigators recovered plastic fragments from O'Keefe's clothes that have been a match with the damaged taillight or one thing fabricated from the identical materials.