Read’s lawyers want judge to unseal DA office’s letters
Lawyers for Karen Read, the Mansfield woman charged with second-degree murder for allegedly backing her SUV into her boyfriend and leaving him for dead during a blizzard in Canton in 2022, are asking a judge to unseal letters sent between the Norfolk District Attorney’s office and federal prosecutors, who are separately reviewing the murder investigation.
In a filing submitted Tuesday in Norfolk Superior Court, attorneys for Read said that on Dec. 4 District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey’s office provided them with a notice of discovery, which is evidence prosecutors must provide to a defendant before trial, along with six letters exchanged between Morrissey’s office and federal authorities between May and November.
Prosecutors had filed a motion to have the letters sealed, Read’s lawyers said. Read’s defense team has the letters but wants them to be publicly available.
“Since the Letters are in the public interest, and since the Commonwealth has not met its burden in establishing that an exemption [to disclosure rules] applies, the Letters — like every other non-impounded document in this case — should be available for public review and scrutiny,” the lawyers wrote.
A pretrial hearing in the high-profile case is scheduled for Friday.
“The Commonwealth is comfortable that those matters can be adequately addressed” at the hearing, David Traub, a spokesperson for Morrissey’s office, said Thursday.
According to Read’s lawyers, the letters contained communications between Morrissey’s office, the US attorney’s office for Massachusetts, and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
Three of the letters were from Norfolk First Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland and amounted to “fishing for federal grand jury materials under the guise of fulfilling” discovery obligations, according to Read’s lawyers.
The US attorney’s office has not publicly confirmed the convening of a federal grand jury investigation into the Read case, though Morrissey has said federal authorities are reviewing the matter.
Two other letters were sent between Morrissey and the DOJ’s professional responsibility office in May and June, Read’s lawyers said. Morrissey sent a third letter in November to Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Boston.
Read, 43, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death. Prosecutors said she ran over John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, outside a Canton home early on Jan. 29, 2022 after a night of drinking. The state medical examiner’s office determined that O’Keefe, 46, died from multiple head injuries and hypothermia.
Read’s lawyers have asserted she is the victim of a coordinated effort by law enforcement officials to protect O’Keefe’s true killers.
They maintain that O’Keefe was beaten in the basement of the home, owned by a fellow Boston police officer, Brian Albert, and that Albert’s dog, a German shepherd, injured O’Keefe’s right arm during the struggle. Prosecutors have dismissed the claims as baseless.
The case has drawn widespread public interest, fueled in large part by the coverage of Aidan Kearney, a controversial blogger known as “Turtleboy” who has championed Read’s claims of innocence. Kearney has been charged with intimidating prosecution witnesses in the case and has pleaded not guilty. He’s also facing a domestic assault charge in a separate case.
Morrissey, in an interview last month, said he was mystified why federal prosecutors and the Boston office of the FBI had taken the “extraordinary step” of conducting an inquiry into the Read prosecution.
“They don’t have any jurisdiction over a state murder trial, so this is an extraordinary step on their part,” Morrissey said. “I’m not worried because I have the utmost confidence in what we’ve done and what people have told us.”
Morrissey said he dates the federal involvement in the case to April, when Rachael Rollins was US attorney for Massachusetts. Rollins resigned May 19 amid a pair of ethics probes that found she misused the power of her office.
Since the spring, Morrissey said he has offered to meet with representatives from the US attorney’s office and FBI agents to address any concerns they might have about the Read case but that they have not done so.
“There have been communications by a variety of people, including myself to both the FBI and the US attorney’s office, to encourage them to come and speak with us.” Morrissey said. “They have not taken us up on the offer.”
The US attorney’s office has declined to comment on Morrissey’s remarks.
Read is free on bail. Her trial is scheduled to begin in March, records show.