The Criminal Justice System Was Found Guilty in the Karen Read Trial

No matter how John O'Keefe died, the government failed here on multiple levels.

It was inevitable that there would still be more questions than answers following the verdict this week in the case against Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the death of her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe. But a couple of things about this convoluted story are unambiguous.

First: O'Keefe's death is a tragedy. Second: The yearslong ordeal—which devolved into a lawyerly circus and electrified many people across the country along the way—is a microcosm of what can happen when metastatic misconduct and zealotry infect the monopoly on power.

The story is, to put it mildly, a bit dizzying. But the basic details are as follows: On an early morning in January 2022, O'Keefe was found dead in the snow outside a house where some of his friends had gathered after a night out drinking. Read had dropped him off a few hours prior, and it had been, by many admissions, an evening dripping with booze. In the following days, law enforcement would coalesce around the idea that Read—intoxicated and angry with O'Keefe—intentionally careened into him with her vehicle, drove away, and left him to die in the freezing cold.

Read was ultimately indicted on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.

It did not take long, however, for that case to start dissolving. There are many reasons for that.

To begin, law enforcement, by any normal standard, botched the crime scene. Police opted not to search inside the home where Read had dropped O'Keefe. They used red Solo cups to collect blood samples. One officer used a leaf blower to clear away snow. (It doesn't take a very active imagination to assume how that might compromise the scene.) And police did not find what was arguably the most important piece of evidence in the case—a taillight fragment—during the initial search. An officer instead said he discovered it hours later when he returned to the house, after Read's vehicle had been impounded.

Perhaps more fraught still is that the case was plagued by accusations that law enforcement acted as a brotherhood to stonewall Read and protect themselves. O'Keefe was a Boston cop, and the house he died in front of was owned by Brian Albert, another Boston cop who has since retired. His brother, Kevin Albert, a Canton police officer, helped with the investigation behind the scenes. But it was Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor who would go on to cement the appearance of conflicts of interest and a venomous sort of bias against Read.

She's a "wack-job cunt," he texted a group of friends the day of O'Keefe's death, adding that, while she might be "a babe," she has "no ass." He told his sister that he hoped Read "kills herself." Of her Crohn's disease, he noted that Read has "a leaky balloon knot" and "leaks poo." In another group chat with law enforcement, Proctor shared he was going through her phone and lamented he had yet to find nude photos of Read, whom he also said was "retarded."

Prosecutors, too, took heat for their overzealousness. The murder charge against Read—whatever you may think of her—was always a baffling stretch, particularly when paired with the dearth of evidence the government had on its side. Massachusetts medical examiner Irini Scordi-Bello testified she did not find evidence of any "impact site" on O'Keefe consistent with a vehicle strike, and neurosurgeon Aizik Wolf, another witness for the prosecution, said that such blunt trauma injuries are "very frequently" seen when "patients that are drunk fall down on ice [or] sidewalks." That overcharging, as prosecutors are often known to do, "likely had the effect of polarizing everybody," Thomas Merrigan, a retired state district court judge, told The Boston Globe, making it harder to get a jury on board with the case against her.

To that point, Read's first trial in 2024 ended in a hung jury. But while that panel failed to reach a consensus on the manslaughter charge, they did unanimously vote to acquit her of murder and leaving the scene. That would only come out after their service concluded, because the judge, Beverly Cannone, did not poll them on each individual count. Read was retried on those charges anyway, in what her lawyers said amounted to a case of double jeopardy.

Cannone, meanwhile, was essentially accused of acting as a prosecutor in a robe, with what appeared to be a noticeable hostility toward Read and her team and a penchant for ruling against them. The jury instructions, drafted by Cannone, were also an issue, and in one way brought the ordeal full circle: Jurors from both trials expressed that they didn't understand them. During deliberations in the second trial, members of the panel said, familiarly, that they weren't sure if an inability to reach a consensus on one charge would result in a mistrial if they agreed on the other two. Cannone declined to clarify, saying that the question was "theoretical" to her, and that "we don't answer theoretical questions." (The jury ultimately convicted Read of operating under the influence and acquitted her of everything else, including the manslaughter charge connected to the drunk driving offense.)

For her part, Read's team alleged that O'Keefe was attacked by people inside the home, that injuries on his arm were consistent with dog bites from the homeowner's German Shepherd, and that law enforcement then engaged in a conspiracy against her. Whether or not the first two parts are true is up for debate. The latter, however, is harder to dismiss—even if it was, in some sense, subconscious, and even if it isn't the exact conspiracy Read alleges. The themes at play—powerful institutions rallying to protect their own, and the government wielding its vast machinery to deny people a fair shake—are evergreen, and should remain in the public consciousness even after Read's time in the true crime ecosphere fades away.

Proctor's words best capture that. "I'm sure the owner of the house"—the one John O'Keefe died in front of—"will receive some shit," a friend texted Proctor in one of his group chats.

"No," Proctor replied. "Homeowner is a Boston cop, too."