Legal view: Massachusetts justice was already a joke. The Karen Read fiasco is now its legacy
On June th the Karen Read saga eventually lurched to its inevitable end when a Norfolk County jury assigned the unenviable task of spending spring and early summer watching corruption theater in Dedham court acquitted Ms Read of all the serious charges against her For Read the Mansfield woman charged with running over and killing her boyfriend and Boston Police Officer John O Keefe in January this was her second trial Another jury last July reached nearly the same conclusion only for courts to say it didn t count In the first trial the jury wasn t informed it could document out a partial verdict Having decided unanimously to acquit Read on the two serious charges but stuck on the third the jury was declared hung resulting in a mistrial on all charges giving prosecutors a mulligan double jeopardy be damned By Read s situation had ballooned from a closely watched criminal trial into a nationwide spectacle Pink-clad Read supporters camped outside court daily national outlets piled on and HBO and ABC cranked out documentaries Around New England women sporting pink hats that read Proctor a rebuke of Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor the disgraced investigator whose obscene texts helped torpedo the prosecution became a familiar sight On the day of the verdict leaving a store in Dedham near the courthouse I was struck by the volume of news helicopters overhead I was watching trial coverage on my phone showing a steady courtroom shot of the ceiling fan presumably to shield the jurors It reminded me of the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now where The End by The Doors plays over choppers in Vietnam blended with Martin Sheen staring glass-eyed at a spinning ceiling fan It all felt jarringly out of place We see things like this in L A and D C not Norfolk County CNN and Fox News who rarely cover anything in Boston both aired the verdict live Fox s coverage awkwardly tried to apply its national rah-rah pro-police rubric onto local facts that didn t help it Somewhere along the line the Boston legal establishment lost control of the Karen Read incident First came journalist Aidan Turtleboy Kearney his intrepid reporting and vast online following frenzied the society so much the Norfolk DA jailed him over it The Atlantic then profiled him and the Read episode The FBI investigated the investigators its findings rejecting the state s theory of O Keefe s death National reporters and true crime junkies dug in while local leaders already lacquered in controversy looked so crooked a frame job seemed not just viable but probable Legally this was an unresolvable incident with insurmountable doubt from glaring police errors oversights and bias or worse Lead investigator and reasonable doubt factory Michael Proctor did more than anyone to blow the situation with his own texts read in court where he called Read a whackjob c and disclosed hopefully she kills herself Proctor later reported ABC News in an interview that amazingly he wouldn t change anything about the way he handled the scrutiny Related Articles Herald readers nail Karen Read outcome sort of Disgraced prosecutor Rachael Rollins surprises Turtleboy with praise for coverage Canton tries to move on heal after Karen Read acquitted of killing John O Keefe Karen Read jury foreman appeals to FBI to reopen the murder study Massachusetts State Police union fighting accusations after Karen Read verdict Perhaps things would be different if it were not the circumstance that absolutely everybody who touches power in Massachusetts keeps going down for corruption From State Troopers accepting bribes of snowblowers and driveway paving jobs to the US Attorney resigning in disgrace for a breathtaking litany of habitual misconduct to city councilors taking handoffs of embezzled cash in city hall bathrooms the Read saga wasn t just unsurprising it affirmed what locals already deduced about how things work here Read s episode blew things open Sunlight as the saying goes is the best disinfectant The affair highlighted how independent voices can circumvent the gatekeeping position of corporate media and rally the constituents It shifted local power structures normalized questioning what we are communicated by bureaucrats and undermined the standing of the state s criminal prosecution bar The Read occurrence also presented something else a distinctly populist class-based cultural moment without local precedent The society even one accustomed to corruption decided enough was enough and protested a prosecution symbolic of all that s wrong with this place and officers who have been in office for years in a region where primary is a dirty word For that I m proud of my state Tom Blakely is a federal judicial law clerk who served in the United States Department of Justice practiced at an international law firm and writes about numerous legal topics Tom serves on the board of Boston College Law School where he hosted the Just Law Podcast Tom is an avid sports fan enjoys the outdoors and splits his time between Cape Cod and Washington D C
