Judge Beverly Cannone denies Karen Read's motion to dismiss for 'extraordinary governmental misconduct'

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Mar 25, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Karen Read’s latest effort to have her murder case tossed, this one for alleged “extraordinary governmental misconduct,” was denied.

Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone called the defense team’s request for a dismissal “a drastic sanction justified only in response to the most egregious and truly harmful conduct.”

“In all but the worst cases, the appropriate remedy is at best, a new trial, such as the one that is scheduled to begin soon,” Cannone wrote in her 27-page decision issued Tuesday afternoon. “Because the claimed violations here do not rise to a level that would justify the most draconian sanction of dismissal, and because the defendant’s constitutional rights can be fully protected in the coming trial, her motion to dismiss is DENIED.”

Read, 45, of Mansfield is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years at the time, on Jan. 29, 2022. She was tried last year, but that ended in mistrial. A second trial is scheduled to begin April 1.

Read’s team filed its motion to dismiss in late February after hinting at it in a separate motion a month prior.

It was part of a dual-pronged effort to quash the charges against Read that saw the defense team bouncing on one day in early March between the federal courthouse in Boston’s Seaport to the Superior Court in Dedham to argue to judges at both that the case should end.

“The cumulative discovery misconduct by the Commonwealth … has been both egregious and pervasive,” defense attorney Alan Jackson said at the state court hearing, in which he claimed that “critical evidence was intentionally … withheld from us.”

He said while he has many claims of this, “in the interest of time and focus” he wanted to home in on the state not handing over videos from the Canton Police Department sally port garage where Read’s Lexus LX570 SUV, the alleged murder weapon, was taken upon her arrest.

This latest claim followed a concerted effort to have at least two of the charges against Read tossed under Double Jeopardy protections.

The defense claims that five jurors have come forward since her trial last year ended in mistrial to say that the jury was ready to acquit on the murder and leaving the scene charges, and was only hung on the manslaughter charge but did not know they could deliver a partial verdict.

The argument was denied in sequence by Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly J. Cannone, who is the trial judge; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; and U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV. The defense then appealed to the federal First Circuit appeals court, where the effort remains.

_____