Karen Reed’s lawyers have petitioned a Massachusetts judge to recall 12 jurors to court to support claims by four of them that they intended to acquit her of murder, more than a month after her trial was declared a mistrial.
“Call the jury, your judge,” Reed’s attorney, Martin Weinberg, said during Friday’s hearing. “Listen to the jury, please. That’s the right thing to do.”
The two-month trial ended in a mismatched verdict on July 1 after jurors issued multiple notes during five days of deliberations and could not agree on whether to find Reed, 44, guilty of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, who is accused of running over her with an SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm.
Prosecutors announced shortly afterwards that they planned to retry the shocking case.
But days later, Reed’s defense team told Norfolk County Judge Beverly Cannon that four jurors had come forward and told the defense they had agreed to find her not guilty on two of the three charges she faces – including the most serious murder charge – and were deadlocked only on one lesser charge.
“We are asking the court not to release this new evidence,” Weinberg said during the roughly hour-long hearing, with Reid sitting at the defense table, “and to cooperate with the investigation into this matter.”
Ultimately, if all jurors tell the judge they intend to acquit Reed on both charges, the case would not be worth retrying and would therefore need to be dismissed, Weinberg said.
Prosecutor Adam Lally objected to Weinberg’s “improper” request to reconvene the jury.
Lally said the law protects the jury system from investigation by lawyers or judges and that it would be illegal to summon them for questioning.
The jurors also made it clear on the record that they could not reach an agreement on more than one charge, Lally added.
“The jury informed the court on multiple occasions that they reached an impasse on the ‘charge,'” Lally said. “The jury mentioned the ‘charge’ twice.”
“This jury did not reach a verdict,” prosecutors said, adding that a retrial could proceed without further questioning of the dismissed jurors.
The judge did not say Friday when he would rule or when he might hand down a sentence.
Reed has been charged with one count of second-degree murder, one count of drunk driving manslaughter and one count of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. If convicted of the main charges, he faces life in prison.
Prosecutors allege that she and O’Keefe had been bar-hopping, got drunk, and dropped him off at a party with fellow officers, then on Jan. 29, 2022, as a snowstorm was about to hit, ran him over from behind with her Lexus SUV and left him in a snowbank in a yard in Canton, Massachusetts.
But her lawyers argue that she was a scapegoat for a widespread police cover-up and that Mr O’Keefe was actually killed following a fight with a colleague.
The theory has inspired Reed’s enthusiastic supporters, who have regularly gathered in large numbers outside the courtroom during trials and hearings.
