Karen Read jury pool could hit 2,000-plus due to 'extraordinary amount of publicity'

Lance Reynolds, Boston Herald on Mar 21, 2025

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BOSTON — A staggering 2,000-plus Norfolk County residents could be considered for Karen Read’s second murder trial if impanelment stretches that long in the blockbuster case.

It’s all aimed at sitting an impartial jury.

A total of 275 potential jurors will be summoned each day to Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham when impanelment begins on April 1, a “larger number than the Office of Jury Commissioner would normally summon,” according to court spokeswoman Jennifer Donahue.

If it takes longer to seat a jury than the four days of opening week, the pool would drop to 243 a day, Donahue told the Herald. The potential jurors have been notified as the Jury Commissioner issues summonses three months in advance “to meet the existing needs of the court,” she said.

Seating a full jury proved difficult in the first trial, with selection taking five days and the pool averaging roughly 90 county residents each day. Due to what the prosecution described Thursday as “unprecedented pretrial publicity,” the process is expected to last longer for round two.

That means more than 2,000 residents could potentially be grilled before they grab one of the juror seats. Donahue told the Herald that the court system doesn’t have data on how the impanelment compares to others historically but that “this is not the largest.”

Attorneys seated a jury of 19 for the first trial, which featured eight weeks of testimony from 68 witnesses and ended in a mistrial with 12 jurors deadlocked. Seven others served as alternates.

Assistant District Attorney Laura McLaughlin requested Thursday that the potential jurors for the second trial be handed a one-page questionnaire dealing with pretrial publicity specifically in addition to two pages that help attorneys identify problems with potential candidates.

“I think that would expedite the impanelment process,” McLaughlin said before Judge Beverly Cannone approved the motion. Potential jurors fill out the questionnaire after taking general questioning from the judge.

During general questioning last year, a majority of candidate jurors had indicated that they had at least heard of or discussed the case. A significant number further indicated they had developed an opinion on the case, and a good number said they were already biased in one way or another.

Read, 45, is accused of striking O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years and a 16-year Boston Police officer, with her car and leaving him to die in a major snowstorm on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Rd., in Canton — a property that O’Keefe’s BPD colleague Brian Albert owned at the time.

Defense attorneys counter that outside actors killed O’Keefe and conspired with state and local police to frame Read for his murder in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022.

Read has pleaded not guilty and a trial on the charges of second-degree murder, and manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

Read supporters have gathered in droves, holding signs, chanting, and making their presence very well-known outside the Dedham courthouse, since the early days of the case. Attention to the saga has multiplied tremendously as it has gained national and international exposure, well beyond Norfolk County.

The case and first trial have been featured in NBC Dateline and ABC 20/20 specials and a Vanity Fair magazine series. Just this week, Investigation Discovery ran a three-night docuseries that included segments of an interview with Herald courts and crime reporter Flint McColgan.

“There has been an extraordinary amount of publicity even far more than the last trial and so close to jury impanelment, it makes sense to me,” Cannone said of a pretrial publicity questionnaire.

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