A Rough February for Karen Read's Defense Continued This Week
It'd be natural to assume that once the support for Karen Read has spread all the way to Jet Blue Park, carried on the gossamer wings of Masshole snowbirds escaping the bleak desolation of winter until her retrial begins in April, that all would be well in her world. But it's been a tough offseason for her defense team. Beginning with this update from last week:
There the issue was whether or not the defense team lied in the first trial when they said they didn't pay Accident Reconstruction expert, cannon enthusiast and oily bohunk Daniel "Crash Daddy" Wolfe $24,000 for his testimony:
The mention of which caused a visibly shaken Judge Cannone to jump off the bench for a recess before coming back to tell both sides to be ready to argue their case on Tuesday the 25th. Which we'll get to.
But before we do, there was a much bigger development in the case. Since practically the beginning of the investigation into the death of Officer John O'Keefe, federal law enforcement has been investigating the investigators. To be clear, the jury in the original trial wasn't allowed to know that a federal grand jury held hearings into how O'Keefe's death has been handled. Witnesses and attorneys were only allowed to vaguely refer to some other proceeding that led to evidence presented to them.
Not to go off the exit here into a long side trip, but suffice to say criminal investigations in Massachusetts in general and Norfolk County in particular have often seemed as crooked as a dog's hind leg. And one death raised enough suspicions that it put the whole region's law enforcement on the Feds' radar before The Commonwealth vs Karen Read ever went to trial.
And so the specter of that investigation into how the Canton Police and the MA Staties have conducted Read's prosecution has hung over this whole trial like Count Orlok's shadow. The more heavily invested in an acquittal you are, the more you've been looking forward to seeing platoons of guys in Kevlar vests with "FBI" on the back sweeping into Norfolk County to ziptie Read's persecutors and frog walk them in front of the TV cameras while she goes free.
Yeah, about that. This dream seems to have died a horrible death this week. At leas according to one report:
But here's where we are at in this case. Everything is up for debate. No matter what is reported, someone on the other side is questioning the truth of it:
And trust me, that is about to become a theme as we go forward over the next several months. A common thread that runs through every hearing, news report, testimony and piece of evidence presented in the retrial. And it is that no one believes anything that doesn't fit their narrative on what happened in that snowstorm the morning of January 29th, 2022. Everyone is too entrenched in their positions to give an inch. The battle lines are drawn and the troops are dug in like it's No Man's Land in WWI.
Which brings us back to yesterday's hearing about the alleged payments to Crash Daddy. Here is just about the closest thing to a straightforward, succinct recap I can find of the major upshot of it all
CBS News - Defense attorney Alan Jackson told jurors at the first trial that he and the crash experts had never met and that they were hired by an independent third-party agency. [special prosecutor Hank] Brennan told the court last week that he had obtained a bill from ARCCA to the defense for almost $24,000. He also said that in emails between Read's team and the experts, Wolfe wrote in one instance, "if you don't want me to say this, that's fine." …
During Tuesday's hearing, Bob Alessi defended the defense team's handling of the witnesses.
"This is one of the most unusual situations I've ever seen in my practice of law, meaning you have these experts, you have great exculpatory information, but you there are significant constraints on how it is you can interact and utilize those experts in a complete unorthodox situation," he said.
Alessi laid out the timeline of communications with the ARCCA witnesses ahead of Read's first trial. He noted that fellow defense attorney David Yannetti never even mentioned the ARCCA experts in opening statements, because he had no idea yet if they would be able to testify. …
Alessi on Tuesday told Cannone that a transcript shows Yannetti said that day, "We've spoken to them only for the purposes of coordination of their testimony and their background."
Alessi pointed out several times that Wolfe sent a testimony outline to Jackson the day before he testified -- not the other way around. …
"There is a murky relationship between the defense and the U.S. Attorney's office as it relates to these ARCCA witnesses," Brennan said, adding "We know we are getting a fraction of the story." …
Alessi said he counted 10 "misdirections" that Brennan made while making his arguments that caused Cannone to halt the proceedings.
"What happens after these 10 misdirections? The court's comments go viral. I'm not saying this for drama's sake. I'm saying this for what has impacted the defense six weeks before trial starts while jury notices are out in the mail. Those words, based upon misdirections that your court has endured," Alessi said. "I don't know if this can be remedied."
Did I really use the word "succinct"? Sorry. Let me take that back. But in fairness to me (and I always make every effort to be fair to me), about halfway through that I suffered a seizure and couldn't stop excerpting. But this illustrates as well as anything where we're at when it comes to this trial. What started out as an attempt by the Commonwealth to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that on that night in 2022, Karen Read intentionally back her car into her boyfriend and murdered him, has three years later degenerated into a full day of arguments over lawyers emailing other lawyers and who said what to whom first.
I'm not saying it's not important. Expert witness testimony, as the term implies, carries more weight than if you're just some slappie who's been called to the stands because you saw something. But this has devolved into an argument about the argument. Like when my kids were teenagers and every time I'd correct them for something, it turned into a debate about semantics. Whether I told them they had to clean up their room now, and how do I define a "clean" room anyway, and via the categorical imperative, ontologically speaking the reality of the room itself exists only in my imagination, and so on.
Today, like in those days, Or how any of this will affect the outcome of the next attempt at an actual verdict. I've thoroughly lost the point of the exercise. Which puts me in the minority. Because like I said earlier, all the internet law professors have made up their minds. And both sides are declaring victory on a motion hearing that hasn't even resulted in a ruling.
Pro defense:
Pro prosecution:
Presumably, these keyboard legal experts were watching the same hearing, and reached two vastly different conclusions. The courtroom equivalent of watching Patrick Mahomes take a Roughing the Passer penalty alongside a Chiefs fan. You both see what you want to see. I guess this is why we empanel neutral, non-biased juries with no dog in the fight and let them decide things. All we can hope for is we find one. I'd say we can also hope that people get less invested in their preconceived ideas about whether Karen Read is guilty or not guilty of murdering a good man like Officer John O'Keefe. But that ship sailed a long time ago.