There is No Offseason in the Karen Read Murder Trial as Her Lawyers Accuse the Prosecution of 'a Complete Dumpster Fire' of Withholding Video Evidence
Just because the Karen Read homicide case ended in a mistrial on July 1st and isn't scheduled to start over again until April, don't be fooled into thinking it's not still making news. Whether it was the defense scoring a major win three weeks ago:
... to various other motion hearings, this trial is never off the Masshole cultural radar.
Such was the case this week, when the new lead prosecutor tried and failed yet again to get a major defense witness disqualified and was accused of withholding key evidence. That having to do with the CCTV footage from the Canton Police sally port that was mysteriously reversed when it was shown to the jury, making the driver side taillight look like it was the passenger side taillight that the state alleges hit and killed Officer John O'Keefe. From June 6th:
[W]hat the Commonwealth presented to their eyes is a video of Karen Read's car that was completely altered.
This was security camera footage taken from the sally port at the Canton PD. And by all appearances, it was mirror-imaged. Reversed. Flipped. So that left is right. And that right … is wrong. Since the whole theory of the prosecution is that O'Keefe was struck and killed by the right taillight. Note that the officer who pulled the SUV into the garage appears to step out of the passenger side:
And if you're able to read the signs and numbers in the background, you'll see they're backwards. But the timestamp on the video is not. Which strongly suggests someone removed it, reversed the image, then put a timestamp over it. Like when you get your windshield replaced and they have to place your inspection sticker and your dump sticker on the new one. Making this a complicated process. And therefore, very intentional. Not just some screwy mix up somewhere along the line we can all have a good laugh over. But criminal corruption of the worst kind, if this is all true.
Which was one of the subjects addressed in this week's pretrial hearings. None of which went especially good for the Commonwealth:
Court TV - Karen Read‘s attorneys returned to court on Thursday, where they accused prosecutors of committing discovery violations and withholding evidence in the case. …
[T]he defense and prosecution have gone head-to-head in motions hearings battling over evidence and proposed expert witnesses. Read’s defense scored a win on Thursday when Judge Beverly Cannone said she would allow defense expert Richard Green to testify. Green testified that witness Jennifer McCabe used her phone to search “how long ti die in cikd” at 2:27 a.m, rather than 6:30 a.m, which the prosecution claims. Despite Special Prosecutor Hank Brennan’s arguments at a Jan. 31 hearing calling Green’s work “forensically and scientifically unsound,” Judge Cannone said he would be allowed to take the stand. …
Cannone did not render a decision on a motion from Read’s defense asking for the Commonwealth to foot the bill for their defense experts to review video from the Canton Police Department.
Author's note: Judge Cannone has since ruled that Read's defense has to pay the $12,000 for their own expert.
The video in question, recorded on Jan. 29, 2022, was introduced at the first trial but was revealed to have been inverted.
Read’s attorney, Alan Jackson, accused the prosecution of deliberately withholding portions of the video. “What we have gotten, it appears, are scraps and fragments of videos that the Commonwealth has decided, on their own and within their own timeframe, to dole out to us,” Jackson said. “Why are we getting videos from Jan. 29, 2022, two-and-a-half years later? And why were some of those videos altered or manipulated or not in their proper format? We still don’t have answers to those questions.”
Brennan denied any wrongdoing and said that he and his office have gone above and beyond to share discovery and gave the defense access to the police department’s DVR system with “no hesitation.”
Jackson told Judge Cannone that he had previously been told the footage had been deleted from the DVR, but in recent days learned that a police officer had uploaded a copy of it to their iCloud. “This entire situation surrounding this DVR and the Commonwealth’s maintenance of the DVR and the footage on it is a complete dumpster fire, and Ms. Read has to pay for the fire extinguisher,” Jackson said.
That's a tough break for Read, having to fork over the 12 grand for her expert. But you have to agree it's much more costly to the Commonwealth's credibility to suddenly be claiming, "Well whaddya know about that? Why, we did have some extra footage after all! Go figure that! Life is funny, huh?" We're now three years and one week since Officer O'Keefe was found dying in the snow outside another cop's house. According to Attorney Jackson, 2 1/2 years since Read's team first started asking for all - emphasis on the ALL - videos pertaining to this case. And wouldn't you know it, the state missed these ones. Because they were in the obscure, hard-to-find, last place anyone would think to look, the Canton flipping Police Station.
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So we're expected to believe they just happened to find it in the DVR like that Varsity Blues I recorded last year because it was on free TV that I keep forgetting to watch. So a police officer just happened to realize he'd uploaded it to the station's iCloud. An omission that could result in dismissal of all charges. But somehow it wasn't noticed until now. Not during the discovery process. The evidentiary hearings. The pretrials. Jury selection. The trial itself. Only now that a new lead prosecutor was signed in Free Agency did anyone think to check the DVR or the iCloud for more CCTV footage. Which, I can't emphasize enough, was extremely suspect to begin with.
All this and I realize I glossed right over the fact the defense will still get to present their phone expert to testify the infamous Jen McCabe Google search happened when everyone was supposedly sound asleep at 2:30ish a.m., and not at 6:30 when she and Read discovered him freezing to death in the front yard.
All of which serves to demonstrate that even though it's the middle of this trial's offseason, the Commonwealth has somehow still managed to extend its losing streak.