Jury in Karen Read trial dismissed until Friday morning

DEDHAM, Mass. (NewsNation) — Jurors have been dismissed after a third day of deliberations in the murder trial against Karen Read, who is accused of killing her police officer boyfriend.

They are set to return 9 a.m. Friday.

During a Wednesday court appearance, Read’s lawyers argued with the judge over an error on the jury forms. While the judge agreed to update the form, it wasn’t before she reacted to Read’s facial expressions during the argument.

“Excuse me, this is funny Ms. Read?” Judge Beverly Cannone snapped at the defendant.

Cannone allegedly caught a smirk on Read’s face during the argument. The jury was not in the courtroom at the time of the incident, and it will likely not impact its decision.

The jury was dismissed at 4 p.m. ET Wednesday after a juror asked to be excused for a prior commitment.

Karen Read charged with murder

Read, 44, of Mansfield, Massachusetts, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and other charges in the death of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe.

O’Keefe, a 16-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, was found unresponsive January 2022 in a snowbank outside of a fellow police officer’s home in Canton, Massachusetts. He was rushed to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

What happened to John O’Keefe?

Prosecutors claim Read hit him with her SUV outside of the home during a snowstorm after a night of drinking. The couple was going to the house to hang out with friends, but witnesses testified that neither made it there.

During the trial, prosecutors relied heavily on what Read reportedly said in the moments after O’Keefe’s body was found. For example, witnesses reported her saying something along the lines of “I hit him, I hit him, Oh my god, I hit him.”

The defense, meanwhile, says Read is the innocent victim of a police cover-up, saying O’Keefe was killed during a fight at the house and dumped on the front lawn.

“‘Look the other way’ — four words that sum up the Commonwealth’s entire case. Four words that sum up the hopes of those who have tried to deceive you. Conflicts of interest? Doesn’t matter. Just look the other way,” defense attorney Alan Jackson said during closing arguments this week. “That’s what they’re counting on. But the uncontroversial fact is you have been lied to in this courtroom. And your job is to make sure you don’t ever, ever look the other way.”

Will tiny bits of evidence be enough?

In their second day of deliberations Wednesday, jurors had to consider whether the sometimes tiny bits of evidence — pieces of a broken tail light, a single human hair — point to the girlfriend’s guilt, or a sprawling cover-up by law enforcement officers to plant evidence and protect their own, leaving a killer unpunished.

What first might have seemed to be an open-and-shut case has drawn outsized attention, fueled by true crime fanatics, conspiracy theorists and Read’s pink-shirted supporters.

The case has divided the community of Canton, the Boston suburb where O’Keefe was raising his niece and nephew after their parents’ deaths and where many of the witnesses and even investigators know one another. And it has attracted hordes of true-crime buffs, including some Read supporters who’ve been accused of harassing witnesses.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.