Murder charges will not be dropped – NBC Boston

The judge overseeing Karen Read's case has denied her request to drop two of the charges against her, giving prosecutors the opportunity to retry all three charges, including second-degree murder, in the closely watched case.

Judge Beverly Cannone announced the ruling on Friday, two weeks to the day after she held a hearing in which she heard arguments from the defense and the prosecution for dismissal of the charges.

“After careful consideration, this Court concludes that retrial of the defendant does not constitute double jeopardy because the defendant was not acquitted of all charges and defense counsel agreed with the Court's finding that the trial was a mistrial,” Cannone wrote in her 21-page ruling. “The motion is therefore DISPUTED.”

Read's next murder trial is scheduled to begin in January. Cannone had previously said she expected her ruling on Read's motion to dismiss to be appealed.

Read's defense had stated in its motion to dismiss the two counts, including second-degree murder and hit-and-run, that five jurors had come forward – three directly to her – confirming that the jury could not agree on the only count of manslaughter. The defense argued that reinstating those two counts would violate double jeopardy because the jury had unanimously voted to acquit Read on those counts.

The Norfolk District Attorney's Office, which is prosecuting Read's case, released a statement Friday morning in response to Cannone's ruling.

“We believe the judge's decision is consistent with nearly 200 years of case law,” the statement said. “We will hear this case on January 27.”

Every twist in the Karen Read murder trial is felt in Canton, where there is a deep divide among residents.

NBC10 Boston has asked Read's lawyers for comment on Friday's ruling.

Read is accused of ramming her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV in January 2022 and leaving him to die outside a Canton home in a snowstorm, although her team insists she was framed. Her two-month trial ended when jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.

Her defense team filed the motion to dismiss the case a week after the mistrial was declared, leaving unresolved a case that has divided the people of Canton and drawn attention far beyond Massachusetts.

After the mistrial, Read's lawyers claimed that a juror said, “Nobody believed that she hit him intentionally or that she hit him intentionally.” The defense also said the judge abruptly declared the mistrial in the courtroom without first asking each juror to confirm his conclusions on each count. Read's attorney, Marty Weinberg, had asked Cannone to call the jury back into court for more questions.

Judge Beverly Cannone heard arguments on charges of first-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal car crash. Attorneys for Karen Read are seeking to have those charges dismissed before her retrial.

However, the judge said the jury did not inform the court during its deliberations that it had already reached a verdict on any of the charges. “Since no verdict was announced in open court, reopening the case against the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” Cannone said in her verdict.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to dismiss a “meritless but sensational post-trial claim” that was based on “hearsay, conjecture and a legally inappropriate reliance on the substance of the jury's deliberations.”

Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued in court that at no point did the jury indicate that it had already reached a verdict on the charges, that it was given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the declaration of a mistrial.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.