Karen Read Murder Trial, Week 7.5: The Prosecution Finally Explains its Theory of the Case. And it is a Humiliating Trainwreck.

I'm going to briefly pause the celebration of Boston winning its 13th championship of the 21st century to turn your attention to the second favorite sport of Massholes everywhere, the homicide trial of Karen Read. I'm doing so now because the trial is paused for a couple of days. First, for the court to interview the defense's potential expert witnesses out of the presence of the jury, followed by the holiday Wednesday.

 For a brief recap of where we ended last week, click here. And for a longer, overall discussion of what this trial is all about, here's the conversation I had with Eddie explaining it all:

But the main reason one day of testimony deserves its own blog is twofold. 

First, Monday was the first time, in the almost two months and through over 60 prosecution witnesses called, that the Commonwealth finally, at along last, presented its theory on how exactly Boston PD Officer John O'Keefe was killed. 

Second, for the absolute clownshow it turned out to be. I say again, because I cannot stress this enough, I went into this trial being as neutral as a I could. To keep and open mind. To disregard all the hypotheses floated by the Twitter sleuths, and just focus on the evidence presented to the jury. As I said to Eddie, if you believed everything you read on the internet four years ago, you'd think Covid came from someone eating a pangolin and Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian psyop. To the extent I could, I committed to just viewing this trial through the same informational blinders the jury would be wearing. 

And as you can tell from reading any of the 10 or so recaps I've done so far, it didn't take the Commonwealth long to lose me. 

Witnesses testifying to things they never mentioned before (Karen Read shouting "I hit him!") to the State Police investigation, the state Grand Jury or the federal Grand Jury. Long time friends claiming they barely know each other. More "butt dials" in the span of a few hours than your average person makes in actual phone calls every week. Two key witnesses - both law enforcement officers - destroying their phones the day before being ordered to preserve them. Contradictions. Inconsistencies. Claims that are refuted by cell phone and health data. A video at the Canton Police garage being presented to the jury without them being told it was flipped into a mirror image. A married couple claiming they were making sexy time at 2:30 in the morning. To put it mildly, most of the witnesses' testimony so far has been somewhere on the Believability Scale between "Implausible," "Preposterous" and "Insultingly Stupid." Or, in the case of lead investigator Michael Proctor, insulting in the most literal sense:

I repeat what I've been saying all along: The witnesses have been so damaging to the Commonwealth's case, you have to keep reminding yourself this IS the Commonwealth's case. So far everyone who's testified has ostensibly been called to the stand for the sole purpose of convicting Karen Read of the crime of intentionally murdering her boyfriend with the back end of her vehicle.  It's a constant struggle to keep that in mind. 

First, because the prosecution's case seems so weak and convoluted. Second, because ADA Lally spends as much time trying to disprove that O'Keefe was in a fight inside the Alberts' house at 34 Fairview Rd, that the idea Read backed into him has been reduced to a minor subplot. But mostly because, with very few exceptions, the witnesses have simply not been credible. Even when they weren't calling the defendant a "cunt" with "leaky poo" in "her balloon knot" who should just make it easy on everyone and kill herself. 

But nothing to this point can hold a flickering candle to the evidence presented by the Commonwealth that was finally, at long last, supposed to put Read behind the wheel of the vehicle they say committed Murder by Taillight on O'Keefe. That evidence was presented by the Mass. State Police's accident reconstruction expert. And as bad as most of the previous witnesses have been, no one was prepared for the absolute goatfuck that was Trooper Joseph Paul's testimony. (Not to be confused with the three previous LEOs with shaven heads.)

This video is not edited:

Now, by way of background, Trooper Paul's curriculum vitae did come up. He claims to have studied the science of kinematics, which Mirriam-Webster defines as "a branch of dynamics that deals with aspects of motion apart from considerations of mass and force." And by studied, I mean it came up in some of his classes when he was getting his Associates in something other that accident reconstruction:

To be fair, I try to not bring this up because no one likes to hear someone brag about their impressive academic achievements. But I too have a couple of Associates degrees. One from the prestigious Massassoit Community College in Brockton, where I graduated without honors. So I won't disparage any professional's educational background. In fact, at least one CourtTV contributor is most impressed with Paul's expertise:

It's just his explanation for how exactly this game of Clue comes down to "It was Miss Read, in the SUV, with the taillight" that comes into question. Essentially, he's got O'Keefe getting struck and doing the Nordberg boat scene:

Which did not have the desired effect on the jurors Lally was shooting for:

It's this business of Paul claiming O'Keefe's body was thrown 30 feet that it particularly hard to process. In the pretrial process, it was largely reported he was found 10-12 feet from the street. (Reminder: Don't believe anything you read on X.) Now we have a highly respected  professional accident scene investigator for the government telling us it was three times that that distance. And yet, despite getting clocked that hard by a motor vehicle that size, enough to send a 220 pound man flying that far, and all that spinning around he did, O'Keefe never let go of the glass he was drinking from. And his phone was found neatly under his body. 

But despite his background in kinematics, Trooper Paul was at a loss to explain the physics involved. At least not in layman's terms for us less educated masses. 

Or, he simply can't say for sure. Because, he reminded everyone, he wasn't there:

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Just to emphasize the point: If you have to have physically been there when it actually happened, you are, by definition, the most inefficient crime investigator that's ever existed. I mean, as wrong as they were, at least the Warren Commission took a stab at figuring out what happened in Dealey Plaza. They didn't wait 2 1/2 years and say, "What do you want from me? I wasn't in Dallas. It's not like JFK got shot in the motel room where I was boning my mistress." Presumably as long as you don't crash into someone in front of Paul's desk at the State Police barracks, the best he can do is make an uneducated guess. 

And it's possible the accident reconstructionist was told there would be no math on this test. Because his reasoning for why he couldn't explain exactly how hard O'Keefe was struck is due to the fact he was hit from a side angle, wouldn't have gotten me a passing grade on Mr. Worcester's 7th grade Physics final:

I'm no closer to getting the worst part than Trooper Paul was from Fairview Rd that night. That came when he testified that he was told Officer O'Keefe was struck by Karen Read's car while he was at the crime scene. Now you might assume he was told this by Proctor. Or by investigator Brian Tully. Or by anyone else involved. But nope. He was able to catch himself before he named any names. 

Instead, he heard this information at the crime scene from … the crime scene. I am not making this up. I couldn't. I don't have the Galaxy Brain-level imagination that would require:

It's unclear from this answer if the crime scene spoke with Fall River accent like Karen Read or a Cant-UHN one like every townie that's taken the stand so far. I'm assuming that if this was summer, the crime scene would've whispered to Paul to build a baseball diamond in the cornfield. But on a snowy night in late January, Fairview was only interested in seeing a perp brought to justice done by Massachusetts' leading psychic investigator. 

Drilling down into more of the minutiae of Monday's testimony, Paul also testified he can't see O'Keefe's car get rocked when Read backs into it with her right taillight in this video. Even when they do the movie trope, "Zoom in. Enhance. Zoom in …" thing:

The Commonwealth couldn't explain how, while they can track every time Read's alleged Murder Lexus was started up, the "key cycle" data doesn't show any kind of triggering event. Such as, backing into a human being at a high enough rate of speed to cause fatal injuries:

The timing of crucial events got changed:

We got more conflicting testimony about the "hos long to die in the cold" Google search, which contradicted earlier witness testimony:

That is, when the state's own witnesses weren't denying they can even retrieve such data:

And just to add an even more ironic comic twist, the reason this expert has a British accent is that he comes from West Yorkshire, England. Where he was a member of the police force that is at the center of a national corruption scandal. Involving what exactly? Computer data. 

The Commonwealth crossed an ocean in order to find an "expert." And he comes from a police department more suspect than Canton's or the Mass. State Police. I'd say again that I can't make this up. But you've figured out by now no fiction could be as strange as this reality. 

Though to be fair to those dwindling few who remain on the pro-prosecution side, some are arguing Lally nailed it with this one:

Just not everyone is buying what the prosecution is peddling:

The best post of the day makes me ashamed I didn't think of it first. Because someone is working my side of the street better than I am:

Which brings us finally to this precious moment. Though it was actually ADA Lally and not the witness saying it into an open microphone, the sentiment is the same. And applies to the whole proceeding through the first 7 1/2 weeks:

Talk to you again on Friday. Gird your loins. It should be bonkers.