Opening statements within the retrial of Karen Learn painted starkly completely different portraits of the defendant Tuesday, with the prosecution alleging she fatally struck her boyfriend along with her SUV as their relationship unraveled, whereas her attorneys argued she was the sufferer of legislation enforcement misconduct and a cover-up.
The theories largely echoed these put ahead in Learn’s broadly publicized first trial for second-degree homicide and different alleged crimes within the Jan. 29, 2022, dying of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. That nine-week trial ended with a hung jury final summer time.
However there have been notable variations in among the particulars introduced by prosecutors and protection attorneys on Tuesday.
Learn has repeatedly pressed her case publicly, chatting with reporters outdoors the courtroom in current weeks and giving prolonged interviews for documentaries and {a magazine} story. Lead prosecutor and particular counsel Hank Brennan stated he intends to depend on Learn’s personal phrases in what he referred to as her “marketing campaign to make public statements.”
“Her statements will verify what from the science and the info,” Brennan instructed the jury. “You’re going to listen to from her personal lips — and lots of of her statements — her admissions to extraordinary intoxication … her admission to being indignant at John that evening.”
In a single clip that Brennan performed for the jury, Learn, 45, mentioned O’Keefe’s dying with “Dateline.” Within the interview, Learn stated she “may have tagged him within the knee and incapacitated him. He didn’t look mortally wounded so far as I may see. However may I’ve executed one thing that knocked him out?”
Prosecutors used the clip as a strategy to reinforce the idea they’ve alleged about O’Keefe’s dying: Fueled by anger and intoxication, Learn backed her Lexus SUV into him after the couple had an argument. In keeping with prosecutors, she left him for useless outdoors the Boston-area house of Brian Albert, then a police sergeant who was having a gathering that O’Keefe was on his strategy to.
Learn and her attorneys have stated she dropped O’Keefe off at Albert’s house round midnight and watched him go inside. In keeping with the protection’s account, when Learn awoke hours later, she panicked after having found that O’Keefe by no means got here house. She discovered him unresponsive outdoors Albert’s house round 6 a.m. the subsequent morning, she and her attorneys say.
Protection lawyer Alan Jackson countered that the clip Brennan introduced to the jury was proven with out context. In Jackson’s telling, the “Dateline” interview was introduced as if Learn was discussing what was going by means of her thoughts when she dropped O’Keefe off at midnight, which he argued was not the case.
“She’s speaking about 6 a.m. when she discovered him,” Jackson stated, including that related statements she made to others weren’t confessions however the phrases of a girl “desperately attempting to piece collectively what occurred on this tragic evening.”
How the protection was capable of handle former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor additionally marked a notable shift.
Proctor led the investigation into O’Keefe’s dying, and he was fired after allegations of misconduct raised throughout his first trial prompted an inside state police investigation. A state panel concluded that he violated company guidelines when he despatched derogatory texts about Learn and shared confidential investigative particulars with non-law enforcement personnel.
Calling Proctor a “malignancy” that unfold all through the investigation into O’Keefe’s dying and Learn’s prosecution, Jackson stated there was no a part of the case that Proctor hadn’t touched.
“He’s been disgraced by his personal company,” Jackson stated. “Not by us. By the Massachusetts State Police — investigated, suspended and fired.”
Jackson accused Proctor of conducting a biased and “corrupted” investigation that shielded folks he had undisclosed ties with — together with Albert — from being scrutinized as doable suspects in O’Keefe’s dying. (Albert testified in the course of the first trial that O’Keefe by no means entered his house the evening of his dying, although he would have been “welcomed with open arms” if he had.)
Brennan didn’t point out Proctor in his opening assertion, and the previous trooper has not publicly commented on his termination. However his household stated the state panel’s choice “unfairly exploits and scapegoats one in every of their very own, a trooper with a 12-year unblemished document.”
Through the first trial, Proctor acknowledged that his feedback about Learn “dehumanized” her however stated his conduct didn’t compromise the integrity of the investigation.
