A jury has reached a verdict within the retrial of Karen Learn, the Massachusetts lady whose broadly watched homicide trial within the 2022 demise of her boyfriend, a Boston police officer, ended with a hung jury final yr.
She has been charged with second-degree homicide, motorized vehicle manslaughter whereas driving underneath the affect and leaving the scene of a collision inflicting demise.
The trial lasted greater than two months and featured dozens of witnesses, together with a collection of consultants who, at instances, provided extremely technical testimony. These specialists aimed to fill in an evidentiary report that contained no eyewitness accounts or video of the occasions that left O’Keefe mortally wounded exterior the suburban residence of a now-retired Boston police sergeant throughout blizzard-like circumstances on Jan. 29, 2022.
O’Keefe, 46, died of blunt drive trauma to the top, based on the health worker’s report. Hypothermia was listed as a contributing issue.
Extra on the Karen Learn case
Prosecutors alleged that Learn, fueled by intoxication and anger over her crumbling relationship, reversed her SUV into her boyfriend and left him for lifeless within the entrance yard of the previous sergeant, Brian Albert.
Learn, 45, had simply dropped off O’Keefe at Albert’s residence for a gathering when the prosecution mentioned she struck him.
“She may have damaged up with him,” particular prosecutor Hank Brennan instructed jurors in his closing argument. “She would not drive away. She takes that 6,000-pound Lexus and he or she comes to a decision. The choice is, she steps on the fuel after banging it into reverse.”
Among the many key items of proof cited by the particular prosecutor was knowledge gathered from Learn’s SUV. He known as a biomechanical engineer who testified that at 12:32 a.m., exterior Albert’s residence, her Lexus was captured driving ahead 34 toes, then instantly accelerating backward for 53 toes at 24 mph.
No direct proof of the hit was introduced at trial, however the engineer testified that dozens of cuts on O’Keefe’s proper arm have been “constant” with accidents brought on by the Lexus’ damaged taillight. The prosecutor introduced crime scene pictures that confirmed what he known as a “particles subject” — bits of purple plastic scattered across the web site of the obvious collision.
He additionally pointed to Learn’s personal phrases as proof of her guilt. Learn discovered O’Keefe’s physique shortly after 6 a.m., and first responders who’d been summoned to the scene recalled her repeatedly saying, ‘I hit him.”
Learn rejected these allegations and mentioned she watched O’Keefe enter Albert’s residence. Her attorneys mentioned that her phrases had been twisted right into a confession and that she was the sufferer of legislation enforcement misconduct and a tunnel-vision investigation.
Within the first trial, Norfolk County Superior Courtroom Decide Beverly Cannone allowed Learn’s attorneys to current a third-party perpetrator protection — or an alternate idea of the crime — and establish Brian Albert and a federal agent, Brian Higgins, as attainable suspects in a conspiracy that sought to border Learn for O’Keefe’s demise. (Each males have denied this.)
Cannone dominated Thursday that the attorneys had not met the brink to take action within the latest proceedings and barred the protection from figuring out them as such of their closing argument. However she allowed the attorneys to argue that authorities didn’t correctly examine Higgins, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who’d been on the Jan. 29 gathering at Albert’s residence.
The protection launched a prolonged collection of textual content messages between Higgins and Learn within the weeks earlier than O’Keefe’s demise that confirmed the 2 flirting. However she stopped texting him on Jan. 23 — a transfer protection lawyer Alan Jackson beforehand recommended may have prompted Higgins to harm O’Keefe.
Each Higgins and Albert testified through the first trial. Neither appeared on the retrial.
The protection as a substitute targeted a lot of its consideration on difficult the circumstantial proof cited by the prosecution. An accident reconstruction skilled testified that neither the injury to Learn’s SUV nor the accidents to O’Keefe’s arm have been per a collision. A pathologist testified that his arm accidents gave the impression to be canine bites.
“There was no collision,” Jackson mentioned repeatedly throughout his closing argument.
Among the protection’s strongest testimony got here from a snow plow driver who handed Albert’s residence a number of instances within the hours after the alleged collision. Requested if he noticed a 216-pound, six-foot-one man mendacity within the yard, he responded flatly, “no.”
One of the vital notable particulars concerning the proceedings was the absence of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor. Proctor led the investigation into O’Keefe’s demise and was fired over revelations that emerged within the first trial that he shared investigative particulars with non-law enforcement personnel and made derogatory feedback about Learn.
Protection attorneys argued that he led a biased and “corrupt” investigation — an allegation Proctor denied within the first trial — and though he was listed as a attainable witness for each the prosecution and protection, neither known as him to testify within the retrial.
“That ought to cease you in your tracks,” Jackson mentioned in his closing argument. “Would not you need to hear from the lead investigator?”
“Michael Proctor was clearly radioactive,” he added. “The Commonwealth stayed away from him.”
In his closing argument, the particular prosecutor mentioned he did not want Proctor’s testimony to show Learn’s guilt past an inexpensive doubt.
“I am not saying you should not be disgusted by the textual content messages,” Brennan, the particular prosecutor, mentioned. “You need to. However that doesn’t change the bodily proof, the scientific proof and the information.”
“He was terminated,” Brennan added. “He was held liable for what he did. He ought to have been. However that does not imply you get a free move. That does not change the information.”
