Karen Learn, the Massachusetts lady whose extensively watched homicide trial ended with a hung jury final 12 months, was acquitted of second-degree homicide Wednesday after prosecutors retried her within the 2022 demise of her boyfriend, a Boston police officer.
A Norfolk County jury additionally acquitted Learn of two lesser expenses — motorcar manslaughter whereas driving beneath the affect and leaving the scene of a collision that triggered the demise of John O’Keefe.
Learn, 45, was convicted of working beneath the affect of liquor. She was sentenced to at least one 12 months of probation instantly after the decision was learn.
Cheers might be heard from exterior the courtroom, the place dozens of Learn’s supporters had been positioned throughout the road. Learn might be seen tearfully hugging her household and protection crew.
From the steps of the courthouse, Learn thanked those that she stated had supplied monetary and emotional help.
“Nobody has fought more durable for justice for John O’Keefe than I’ve,” she added.
The prosecutor didn’t instantly touch upon the decision.
A number of individuals who knew O’Keefe launched a press release calling the “outcome a devastating miscarriage of justice.” Some who signed the assertion had been recognized by Learn’s protection attorneys as potential suspects who weren’t correctly investigated in O’Keefe’s demise.
“At present, our hearts are with John and all the O’Keefe household,” they stated. “They’ve suffered by way of a lot and deserved higher from our justice system. Whereas we could have extra to say sooner or later, at the moment we mourn with John’s household and lament the merciless actuality that this prosecution was contaminated by lies and conspiracy theories unfold by Karen Learn, her protection crew, and a few within the media.”
The decision got here on the fourth day of deliberations, after practically two months of testimony and after Norfolk County Superior Court docket Choose Beverly Cannone summoned prosecutors and protection attorneys to the courtroom for an uncommon announcement: The jury stated they’d reached a unanimous choice, she stated, then reversed themselves and stated they’d not.
The trial featured dozens of witnesses, together with a sequence of consultants who, at instances, provided extremely technical testimony. These specialists aimed to fill in an evidentiary report that contained no eyewitness accounts or video of the occasions that left O’Keefe mortally wounded exterior the suburban house of a now-retired Boston police sergeant throughout blizzard-like circumstances on Jan. 29, 2022.
O’Keefe, 46, died of blunt power trauma to the pinnacle, in line with the health worker’s report. Hypothermia was listed as a contributing issue.
Extra on the Karen Learn case
Prosecutors alleged that Learn, fueled by intoxication and anger over her crumbling relationship, reversed her SUV into her boyfriend and left him for useless within the entrance yard of the previous sergeant, Brian Albert.
Learn had simply dropped off O’Keefe at Albert’s house for a gathering when the prosecution stated she struck him.
“She may have damaged up with him,” particular prosecutor Hank Brennan informed jurors in his closing argument. “She does not drive away. She takes that 6,000-pound Lexus and he or she comes to a decision. The choice is, she steps on the gasoline after banging it into reverse.”
Among the many key items of proof cited by the particular prosecutor was knowledge gathered from Learn’s SUV. He referred to as a biomechanical engineer who testified that at 12:32 a.m., exterior Albert’s house, her Lexus was captured driving ahead 34 ft, then abruptly accelerating backward for 53 ft at 24 mph.
No direct proof of the hit was offered at trial, however the engineer testified that dozens of cuts on O’Keefe’s proper arm had been “constant” with accidents brought on by the Lexus’ damaged taillight. The prosecutor offered crime scene pictures that confirmed what he referred to as a “particles subject” — bits of purple plastic scattered across the web site of the obvious collision.
He additionally pointed to Learn’s personal phrases as proof of her guilt. Learn discovered O’Keefe’s physique shortly after 6 a.m., and first responders who’d been summoned to the scene recalled her repeatedly saying, ‘I hit him.”
Learn rejected these allegations and stated she watched O’Keefe enter Albert’s house. Her attorneys stated that her phrases had been twisted right into a confession and that she was the sufferer of regulation enforcement misconduct and a tunnel-vision investigation.
Within the first trial, Norfolk County Superior Court docket Choose Beverly Cannone allowed Learn’s attorneys to current a third-party wrongdoer protection — or an alternate concept of the crime — and establish Brian Albert and a federal agent, Brian Higgins, as potential suspects in a conspiracy that sought to border Learn for O’Keefe’s demise. (Each males have denied this.)
Cannone dominated Thursday that the attorneys had not met the brink to take action within the current proceedings and barred the protection from figuring out them as such of their closing argument. However she allowed the attorneys to argue that authorities did not correctly examine Higgins, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who’d been on the Jan. 29 gathering at Albert’s house.
The protection launched a prolonged sequence of textual content messages between Higgins and Learn within the weeks earlier than O’Keefe’s demise that confirmed the 2 flirting. However she stopped texting him on Jan. 23 — a transfer protection legal professional Alan Jackson beforehand urged may have prompted Higgins to harm O’Keefe.
Each Higgins and Albert testified in the course of the first trial. Neither appeared on the retrial.
The protection as an alternative centered a lot of its consideration on difficult the circumstantial proof cited by the prosecution. An accident reconstruction skilled testified that neither the harm to Learn’s SUV nor the accidents to O’Keefe’s arm had been in line with a collision. A pathologist testified that his arm accidents gave the impression to be canine bites.
“There was no collision,” Jackson stated repeatedly throughout his closing argument.
Among the protection’s strongest testimony got here from a snow plow driver who handed Albert’s house a number of instances within the hours after the alleged collision. Requested if he noticed a 216-pound, six-foot-one man mendacity within the yard, he responded flatly, “no.”
One of the vital notable particulars concerning the proceedings was the absence of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor. Proctor led the investigation into O’Keefe’s demise and was fired over revelations that emerged within the first trial that he shared investigative particulars with non-law enforcement personnel and made derogatory feedback about Learn.
Protection attorneys argued that he led a biased and “corrupt” investigation — an allegation Proctor denied within the first trial — and though he was listed as a potential witness for each the prosecution and protection, neither referred to as him to testify within the retrial.
“That ought to cease you in your tracks,” Jackson stated in his closing argument. “Would not you need to hear from the lead investigator?”
“Michael Proctor was clearly radioactive,” he added. “The Commonwealth stayed away from him.”
In his closing argument, the particular prosecutor stated he did not want Proctor’s testimony to show Learn’s guilt past an affordable doubt.
“I am not saying you should not be disgusted by the textual content messages,” Brennan, the particular prosecutor, stated. “You need to. However that doesn’t change the bodily proof, the scientific proof and the info.”
“He was terminated,” Brennan added. “He was held chargeable for what he did. He ought to have been. However that does not imply you get a free cross. That does not change the information.”
