Karen Read’s lawyers promised she would go on offense as she defends herself against a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of her boyfriend, Boston Police officer John O’Keefe.
That strategy will be evident during a hearing Tuesday morning on several motions to compel information filed by Read’s team in recent months.
The hearing is expected to address requests from Read’s defense for Judge Mark Gildea to force several parties to produce information. Those parties are: former Massachusetts State Police trooper Michael Proctor, who led the criminal investigation into Read, the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office, which unsuccessfully prosecuted Read for O’Keefe’s death and suspended Canton Police Sgt. Sean Goode.
The hearing was also set to address a motion from the O’Keefe family seeking more information from Read in response to a formal questionnaire they sent her about her third-party claims. But both sides indicated in a new filing that they were working toward an agreement on that issue and asked to delay that component of the hearing.
O’Keefe’s family has accused Read of running him over with her SUV after a night of drinking in January 2022 — the same claim made by prosecutors during Read’s two criminal trials. They sued Read and the two Canton bars the couple drank at following the conclusion of Read’s first criminal trial. The suit was essentially paused until Read’s second trial ended with her acquittal in June.
Read is pursuing the same claim she made during the criminal case in the civil suit — that someone other than her is responsible for O’Keefe’s death and investigators conspired to frame her for his killing.
In court filings in the lawsuit, Read’s defense team has said it served Proctor, who was fired for his conduct in the investigation into Read, with two subpoenas seeking specific sets of documents. But they claim Proctor failed to respond to either subpoena within the agreed-upon timeframe to produce what they sought.
The documents are critical to Read’s defense because, her lawyers say, they could prove her claims that Proctor “deliberately ignored, manipulated and falsified evidence to direct the investigation away from other potential suspects and towards Read.”
Neither Proctor nor lawyers hired to represent him have opposed the motion to compel in court filings.
Read’s team has also sought information regarding Proctor from the district attorney’s office. Last fall, Proctor was forced to turn over his personal phone for review of information that could be relevant to other pending criminal cases. A defense attorney in an unrelated case who reviewed some of the information has said it showed “absolute bias” on his part. Read’s lawyers want to review that new information.
But the district attorney’s office has argued the request is “facially overbroad and unduly burdensome.”
“The defendant’s request for unfettered access to the entirety of this data would result in the production of privileged and non-relevant material, far exceeding the bounds of relevance surrounding the liability for Mr. O’Keefe’s death,” wrote Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Laura McLaughlin, who was on the team of lawyers that twice prosecuted Read.
But Read’s defense shot back in their own memo that “it is very likely, based on the select messages to and from Proctor she [Read] received in the past, that this cellphone extraction relates, at least in part, to Read.”
The district attorney’s office asks for Read’s motion to be denied given that she has also issued a subpoena to Proctor, whose phone is at the center of the dispute. They suggest that she could obtain the records she wants from him, rather than forcing the district attorney to turn them over, since the district attorney is already reviewing the material for information in criminal cases.
Prosecutors are turning over other documents from the prosecution of Read to both sides in the case, with a joint motion to keep some of those documents under a protective order filed late last month.
As for Goode, Read’s team served him a subpoena in November, which he has yet to reply to. Goode was placed on administrative leave by Canton Police that same month, apparently due to information found on Proctor’s phone, according to court papers and town officials. Read’s defense is seeking documents from him about his role in the Read investigation and the internal investigation into his conduct.
In addition to the affirmative defense she is pursuing in the wrongful death lawsuit, Read has sued Proctor and other investigators, as well as several civilian witnesses who testified against her, claiming violations of her civil rights. The witnesses have moved the case to federal court, though it could still be sent back to state court by a federal judge.
Thus far, Read has not asked to move the civil rights case back to the state court, but her team has indicated a desire to combine the two pending lawsuits.
A key deadline is approaching in the civil rights case: many of the defendants must file their answer to Read’s lengthy complaint by Jan. 16.
