Karen Read trial live updates: Crash expert testifies, defense prepares to wrap case soon

USA Today

09-06-2025

Karen Read trial live updates: Crash expert testifies, defense prepares to wrap case soon
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Karen Read's second murder trial begins with new jury
Karen Read is starting her second trial after being prosecuted for the 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, last year.
Karen Read's second murder trial entered its eighth week Monday, with more testimony from a defense accident reconstruction expert who says Read's SUV never hit John O'Keefe.
On Friday, Daniel Michael Wolfe showed jurors crash-test videos he created to simulate how Read's Lexus could have struck O'Keefe and what damage his body would have caused to the vehicle at different speeds.
Wolfe said that the shattered plastic patterns created on the car's taillight during the tests did not match the cracks found on Read's car.
Catch up: Karen Read trial: Can crash reconstruction expert help the defense?
Prosecutors accuse Read, 45, of backing into O'Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, in a drunken rage and then leaving him to die in the snow outside the home of another cop after a night drinking with friends. She has been charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.
Read's defense team maintains that she was framed for O'Keefe's 2022 death. They say O'Keefe was beaten by law enforcement officers who were having a house party inside the home, then bitten by a dog and thrown outside in the middle of a blizzard. The defense's case largely rests on accusations that the investigation into O'Keefe's death was mired by deceit, incompetence and bias.
A jury will soon deliberate over Read's fate – again. Her first trial ended in July 2024 in a mistrial after the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict.
Read told local media the defense in this case could wrap up its testimony by Tuesday, June 10.
Jury instructions filed by Read's lawyers suggest that the Massachusetts woman may not testify in the retrial. They include a section informing the jury of Read's Fifth Amendment right not to testify, telling them they 'may not hold that against her.'
Christopher Dearborn, a law professor at Suffolk University in Boston who has followed the case closely, said the instructions are likely a 'harbinger' that Read's attorneys are not going to call her to the stand, though he noted that they could change their mind.
'Frankly, I don't think it would make a lot of sense to call her at this point,' Dearborn said, noting the number of public statements Read has made that could be used against her.
The court has already heard from Read in the trial through clips prosecutors played of interviews conducted in which she questioned whether she 'clipped' O'Keefe and admitted to driving while inebriated.
Dearborn told USA TODAY that there are two schools of thought around whether to include a section on a defendant's right not to testify in jury instructions. Some defense lawyers don't include the section because they don't want to "draw a bull's eye" around the fact that the defendant didn't testify and cause jurors to "speculate," Dearborn said.
Other times, he said, it is the "elephant in the room" and the specific instructions telling the jury they can't hold the defendant's lack of testimony against them are necessary.
CourtTV has been covering the case against Read and the criminal investigation since early 2022, when O'Keefe's body was found outside a Massachusetts home.
You can watch CourtTV's live feed of the Read trial proceedings from Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts. Proceedings begin at 9 a.m. ET.