DA complained to federal prosecutors about review of Read case
Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey complained in May to the Justice Department about the “highly unusual and possibly abusive” move by federal prosecutors in Massachusetts to investigate his office’s murder prosecution of Karen Read, who is accused of backing her SUV into her boyfriend and leaving him for dead during a blizzard in Canton in 2022, records show.
In a May 18 letter to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, Morrissey wrote that “multiple” witnesses in the Read case had told his staff in late April that they had received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury probing the matter.
In response, Norfolk First Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland told Joshua S. Levy, then first assistant in the US attorney’s office for Massachusetts, that the timing of the federal probe could “imprudently” affect Read’s ongoing prosecution, Morrissey wrote. But Levy, now the acting US attorney, indicated that federal prosecutors were proceeding with the investigation.
“It appears to be unprecedented for the federal government to step into the middle of an ongoing state murder prosecution prompted only by inflammatory and ethically dubious defense strategy,” Morrissey wrote.
The sharply worded letter, one of several messages exchanged between Morrissey’s office and federal authorities between May and November, were unsealed Friday in Norfolk Superior Court, where Read is slated to stand trial in March, after Morrissey’s office indicated it no longer objected to the correspondence being made public.
The clash between state and federal prosecutors marks the latest flashpoint in the sensational case, which has sparked allegations of conspiracies and cover-ups by investigators. In his letter, Morrissey said Read’s lawyers had “been raising specious issues of a third-party culprit and complaints of witness and police misconduct.”
Morrissey also asked the Office of Professional Responsibility
to review the circumstances of the federal investigation and requested that, should it continue, “it be transferred to another [federal] office without history of conflict, bias, and abuse of prosecutorial discretion.”
Morrissey noted that his office had previously collaborated well with federal prosecutors, citing a 2018 federal case against former Mafia don Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, who was convicted in the 1993 murder of South Boston nightclub owner Steven DiSarro and sentenced to life in prison.
During that case, a federal prosecutor asked a State Police detective if he had “any kind of damaging information” on Morrissey and his prosecutors, Morrissey wrote. The federal prosecutor’s wife had been a prosecutor in Morrissey’s office, where it was determined she needed “more seasoning and legal experience” to work superior court cases, Morrissey wrote. She was offered a district court role with no pay reduction but instead resigned and filed an ethics violation with the state Board of Bar Overseers, which dismissed it, Morrissey wrote.
A spokesperson for Levy declined to comment Tuesday.
Morrissey also noted that his letter came one day after damning reports from two government watchdogs found that US Attorney Rachael S. Rollins had repeatedly committed ethical breaches and misused the power of her office, particularly by trying to influence the 2022 election for her successor as Suffolk district attorney. Rollins resigned and Levy became acting US attorney.
The findings of those reports “reinforce my belief ” that Levy’s office should be “removed from whatever investigation is being conducted into the Read matter,” Morrissey wrote.
In a response on June 1, the Justice Department office told Morrissey that he should take up his request to remove Levy’s office from the Read probe with the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.
Morrissey’s office did so, and the general counsel for the US attorneys executive office, Jay Macklin, wrote in August that there was “no basis” for recusing Levy’s office.
Federal prosecutors have “a very different opinion of the circumstances in this case,” Macklin wrote. “[Levy’s] office has not reached any official determination whether [federal] prosecution is warranted, but they believe it is essential to continue their investigation given the information of which they are aware.”
Macklin didn’t elaborate on that information, and the status of the federal probe remains unclear. Federal prosecutors have not commented publicly on it.
Read has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death.
Prosecutors allege that she backed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, during a snowstorm outside the Canton home of a fellow police officer early on Jan. 29, 2022, after a night of drinking. The state medical examiner’s office determined O’Keefe, 46, died from multiple head injuries and hypothermia.
Read’s lawyers assert that O’Keefe was beaten in the basement of the Canton home and that the family’s dog, a German shepherd, injured his right arm during the struggle.
Attorneys for Read, who is free on bail, had no comment on the unsealed letters.