Crime
“I looked at her from Day 1 as an innocent woman that needed to be proven guilty, and I don’t think any of that was shown in this process,” the foreman said.
Even before he voted last week to clear Karen Read of murder and manslaughter charges, the jury foreman in Read’s retrial said he didn’t believe she killed her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.
“Karen Read is innocent, and she didn’t do this crime,” the foreman said during an appearance on the “TODAY” show Tuesday. “No one could prove that she did this crime. So I looked at her from Day 1 as an innocent woman that needed to be proven guilty, and I don’t think any of that was shown in this process.”
The man, who was not named on air for privacy reasons, said he also felt there was no solid evidence to prove O’Keefe was struck by a car, as prosecutors had alleged.
Read, 45, was acquitted last Wednesday in O’Keefe’s January 2022 death; the jury only found her guilty of drunk driving. Prosecutors claimed Read backed her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage while dropping him off at an afterparty in Canton, though Read’s lawyers countered with their own theory that O’Keefe was fatally injured after joining the party inside 34 Fairview Road.
To hear the defense tell it, Read was the victim of a botched and biased investigation.
It took slightly more than 21 hours of deliberations for the jury to reach its unanimous verdict, and the foreman said Tuesday the jurors tried to focus on the evidence and avoid falling down any rabbit holes.
“We just had to lock down and figure it out through the evidence,” he added.
Another juror, Paula Prado, told The Boston Globe she was left “convinced” Read is not responsible for O’Keefe’s death.
“There’s too many holes for us to fill, and it wasn’t our job to fill those holes,” Prado told the Globe. “We needed to have the reasonable doubt, and we had [it] over all the aspects of the investigation.”
Juror No. 4, identified only as Jason, similarly told TMZ he felt Read “was innocent” and did not believe her SUV collided with O’Keefe. Janet Jimenez, juror No. 12, said in an interview with WCVB she was leaning toward a “guilty” verdict as deliberations began, though she eventually found room for reasonable doubt.
According to the foreman, some jurors entered deliberations with their own personal opinions or feelings on the case. He said he wanted to ensure that by the end of deliberations, “everyone felt good about the decision that we all collectively came together with.”
“It took us a couple of days to really get the gears going, but when we did it was smooth trails after that.”
Asked who could have killed O’Keefe if not Read, the foreman gave an ironic chuckle.
“That’s not my job,” he replied. “Something did happen to Mr. O’Keefe, and it’s foul play or whatever you want to say.”
But, he continued, there was no “solid evidence that there was a collision, or [O’Keefe] got hit by a car.” Likewise, the foreman said he doesn’t believe Read struck O’Keefe with her SUV.
“Not with the evidence that was put in front of me and what we heard over everything,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
The foreman suggested justice for O’Keefe’s family might entail “someone looking into [O’Keefe’s death] further” to pinpoint another suspect, though he acknowledged any further investigation would be subject to the same complications seen during Read’s two trials.
“It’s just hard,” he said. “And to put a mother through that, and a father, and a brother, and the whole family through that again — it’s a lot.”
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