Karen Read Retrial, Week 3: The Prosecution's Circus Continues, but There's Still No Sign of the Ringmaster

I've been saying it from the first few days of the first trial of Commonwealth v. Karen Read, that this was us exporting our way of life to the world. Judging by the reactions on CourtTV and by the roughly 700 YouTube lawyers live streaming the retrial for 8 hours a day, I wasn't wrong. This has been fresh, locally sourced, sustainable, farm-to-table Masshole Culture from the opening gavel. 

I mean, just get a load of this absurdist Greatest Hits Compilation from this past week and a half alone:

That second person you saw is a weatherman who was brought in by the Commonwealth presumably to testify about how hard frozen the ground was at 34 Fairview, and his in explanation gave a history of the Blue Hills Meteorological Observatory, and how it was founded by some 19th century guy who lived in Boston. I don't remember the name of the the Observatory's founder or what year this was. But I can confirm he lived at 5 Commonwealth Ave. I'm not criticizing this gentleman, mind you. That is a man who had been carrying a piece of trivia around in his head for who knows how many years, and wasn't going to miss his chance to share it. 

I am also loathe to criticize the first woman in that clip. She's apparently an expert at data retrieval, and my expertise is limited to quoting Monty Python. After 9/11, she joined the United States Marine Corps. After 9/11, I joined the Weymouth Elks. So I'm in no position to mock her. It's just that I have this thing about women - and it's always women - who talk to adults like it's Story Circle Time at Bridges to Learning preschool:

Halfway through that pepperoni pizza metaphor, I thought she was going to tell the jurors to put their Listening Caps on and raise their hand if the story gets too upsetting. But then brought it back to a language the 18 people who couldn't avoid getting empaneled could relate to by explaining how there's a mode on your phone that will help a husband search for porn without his wife knowing.

That said, Jessica Hyde seemed to score major points for the prosecution when she emphatically said there's overwhelming evidence Jen McCabe's "hos long to die in the cold" search was done at 6:24am, not at 2:27am:

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So much of the defense's narrative that there was a coverup of an actual crime inside the house with Karen Read as the patsy depends on McCabe Googling that in the middle of the night, hours before John O'Keefe was allegedly found lying in the snow. Move that search to the early hours of the next day, and McCabe's story that Read asked her to becomes plausible. While the slope of Mt. Conspiracy that the defense is trying to drag their theory up, becomes much steeper. 

But the picture of "Jen McCabe: Mastermind" they've been trying to paint became clear once again when Hyde reported finding she made 200 calls in the span of three days after O'Keefe's death. TWO HUNDRED. How far back in your call history would you have to go in order to find 200 outgoing calls. If Hyde checked my phone and said I hadn't dialed that many numbers and hit "SEND" this decade, I wouldn't be surprised. McCabe chose this particular moment to make that many in the course of a long weekend. Does that prove a conspiracy? Not at all. But it certainly gives the theory a shot of Narcan. And they'll no doubt keep talking about it:

Without a doubt though, the star of the show was MA State Police Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik, who worked alongside the disgraced and fired lead investigator, Michael Proctor. You may remember him as the guy who gave a "thumbs up" emoji reply to a group text on everyone's state issued phones when Proctor was looking for noodz on Reads phone, called her a cunt with a leaky balloon knot that leaks poo, said it would be best if she killed herself and so on. Bukhenik was Proctor's superior at the time. And for this act of misconduct, he paid the ultimate price for a Massachusetts state worker. He lost five days vacation time. Oh, the pain. The pain. 

But Bukhenik spent much of his testimony going to great lengths to deny that Proctor was, in fact, the lead investigator. And even though the jury still hasn't seen Proctor, and things got super awkward. Though the awkwardness actually started outside:

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But that's beside the point. It's having to talk about Proctor, whose presence is hanging over this trial like the phantom at a haunted amusement park in Scooby Doo. The Norfolk County Man of Mystery is the one subject Bukhenik didn't want to discuss. But in cross, he was asked about practically nothing else. He tried to only refer to Proctor as "a case officer" assigned to this investigation:

Which won't go well once the defense starts entering these documents into evidence:

And if this pause after "Honor and integrity by Michael Proctor?" was any more pregnant, the midwife would've called for an epidural:

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If Michael Proctor-related questions where the only kind Bukhenik had a hard time with, you could understand. At some point in every man's life he has to answer for some dickheaded move his idiot buddy/acquaintance/co-worker did. Any married man who came home at some ungodly hour of the morning because his friend refused to leave the bar/party/casino knows the true meaning of Guilt by Association. But it would turn out that being on a text chain with Proctor was the least of his problems. There was his sudden struggles with the English language that has never come up until now, and extends to a word that I estimate was third grade vocabulary in our Word Wealth books at Ralph Talbot Elementary:

… of it was missing, and we were locating pieces that were consistent with texture, color and size fragments from that SUV on the lawn. So I wasn't assuming anything. The evidence was speaking to us. 

 ----------------------------- 

AJ: Do you know what word theory means?  

YB:  I'm sorry. English is, like a third, third language for me. So if you can bring up the Webster's Dictionary, I can read it out. 

AJ: You want to pull up the Webster dictionary to define the word that you used 40s ago. We're working off of a ‘theory’, quote unquote. You said it, not me. 

HB: Objection 

BC. Sustained. Let's move on.

Let's get this straight. A career officer. Trained in Criminal Justice. Graduated from an actual Police Academy (meaning not just the kind with Steve Guttenberg and Bubba Smith). Educated on investigating crimes, and theoretical theorizing about competing theories of a case, develops amnesia about a word he and everyone else in the English speaking world used once a day. At what would seem a pretty convenient moment.

But by no means did Bukhenik's struggles with English end with defining "theory." Howie Carr in the Herald transcribed more of his testimony:

He knew what had happened to John O’Keefe, the Boston cop.

“At dat point,” he stammered, “our theory has had evolved to a vehicle strike and I was suspectin’ dat he was hit out of his shoes.” …

I’ll let Bukhenik give you the ESL explanation of why the Canton PD checked out.

“We had learned that there was a loose familiarial (sic) connection through town channels the address and the possibility of a Canton police officer or detective out of overwhelming precaution of impropriety not that there was one decided to step away from any interview investigation assistance with us.”

By the way, he did say “familiarial.”

Which brings us, in order to wrap this up on a high note, to the shoes Bukhenik testified to. The ones John O'Keefe was wearing but the State Police investigators "was suspectin' dat" he was knocked out of like a Looney Tunes character. The black Nikes that switch from left to right depending on who's pulling out of a bag to identify it:

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This is the kind of sleight of hand that could get you hired to do magic at kids parties. But is more likely to get a jury to question your entire prosecution. Thrown on the pile of inconsistencies that have already been presented like the snow underneath O'Keefe's body (which would indicate he ended up there well after it started to accumulate), the questions about whether or not security cameras actually show Read's taillight broken:

… this chain of custody clusterfudge with regard to the sneaker that allegedly got knocked off a man's foot just makes the reasonable doubt Karen Read needs all the more reasonable. 

Maybe next week we'll actually get to hear from lead investigator randomly assigned case officer Proctor. If so, that's going to be appointment viewing. Get some rest this weekend, all. Next week is going to be bananas.