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Karen Read murder case prosecutor wants defendant's communications with defense lawyer

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

BOSTON — The prosecutor in the Karen Read murder case is seeking communications between the defendant and her lawyer David Yannetti and says that the defendant has “waived her attorney-client privilege.”

“In this case the privilege holder, the defendant, has clearly and intentionally waived her attorney-client privilege regarding specific conversations she had with Attorney Yannetti regarding the collision between her vehicle and John O’Keefe,” special prosecutor Hank Brennan wrote in a Thursday evening filing.

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.

She was tried last year on the charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident, but that ended in a mistrial. She is scheduled to be retried beginning on April 1.

Brennan in this filing said he is seeking “all texts, emails, or written communications” between Read and Yannetti between Jan. 29, 2022 — the day of O’Keefe’s death — and Feb. 2, 2022.

“The defendant voluntarily and intentionally disclosed the existence of these communications and her initial thoughts about her culpability for causing the death of John O’Keefe during various public interviews,” Brennan argues. “The communications, confirmed by the defendant to exist, are no longer privileged, nor confidential because the defendant chose to widely and publicly disseminate them.”

Brennan backs up his argument by citing specific quotes from the Boston Magazine interview Read did with reporter Gretchen Voss, a Vanity Fair article and the five-part documentary that aired these past Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights on the network Investigation Discovery — stylized as ID — and the MAX streaming service formally known as HBO MAX.

 

Full disclosure: This reporter is featured in interviews in the docuseries.

Brennan, as he has done for previous Read interviews, also filed for “all unedited video and audio recordings in the possession of Unsolved Productions, Inc. and producer Terry Meurer” for the ID and MAX documentary series, which is called “A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read.”

In his Thursday request, Brennan argues that Meurer “has described in media interviews, that the access to the defendant and her defense team was ‘unprecedent.’”

“As part of this docuseries, the defendant and her counsel permitted cameras to record their trial preparation sessions in the ‘war room’; the car rides to and from court where the defendent and her counsels discuss upcoming testimonies and trial strategies, often commenting on the evidence, prosecutor, or the court; and one-on-one interviews with the defendant, and defense counsels,” Brennan wrote.

Yannetti declined to comment on the filing when reached by the Herald.

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