Karen Read’s legal team has taken action by filing an appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court regarding the judge’s decision not to dismiss two out of the three criminal charges against her. The 44-year-old woman is accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV during a snowstorm in January 2022, leaving him injured. The trial lasted two months and ended in July with a mistrial being declared on the fifth day of jury deliberations due to a deadlock.

Judge Beverly Cannone recently denied a defense motion to drop several charges, leading prosecutors to set a new trial date for January 2025. However, Karen Read’s lawyers argue that retrying her on two charges would constitute unconstitutional double jeopardy. Prosecutors claimed that prior to the incident, both Read, a former adjunct professor, and O’Keefe had been drinking heavily before she allegedly struck him with her SUV and drove off. O’Keefe’s cause of death was determined to be hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

The defense team painted Karen Read as a victim, alleging that O’Keefe was killed inside a fellow officer’s home and then placed outside. They contended that Read was unfairly targeted as a suspect due to being an “outsider,” diverting attention away from law enforcement officers potentially involved. Following the mistrial, evidence was presented indicating that jurors had reached a unanimous decision of Read’s innocence on certain charges, despite being deadlocked on one count of manslaughter.

Despite this revelation, Judge Cannone noted that since jurors did not formally announce a verdict in court, retrying the defendant did not violate double jeopardy principles. The case remains unresolved as it moves forward to the state’s highest court for further review.