The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Karen Read’s emergency request to delay her retrial for the murder of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, as jury selection nears its conclusion.
On April 9, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson rejected Read’s petition to pause the retrial while she challenges two charges against her on double jeopardy grounds.
Read’s legal team had filed a petition on April 1, arguing that she should not be retried on charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in injury or death. They contend that a mistrial last year, which ended in a hung jury, should prevent her from facing those charges again.
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Read, 45, is accused of backing into O’Keefe with her SUV in January 2022 and leaving him to die in the snow outside a home in Canton, Massachusetts, after a night of drinking. Her attorneys maintain that Read was framed in a cover-up by local law enforcement.
The first trial ended without a verdict, with jurors saying they were divided on a manslaughter charge, but they had reached a unanimous decision to acquit her on the other two counts.
In her petition, Read argued that retrying her on those two charges would violate the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which protects individuals from being prosecuted twice for the same crime.
Her legal efforts to have the charges dismissed were rejected by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
With jury selection now underway for her retrial, the case will move forward, and a response to Read’s petition is due by May 5.
