Watch live: Karen Read appears for 2nd hearing of day after double jeopardy appeal in federal court

BOSTON — Karen Read’s ongoing legal battle against the murder charges she faces in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe will unfold in two different courthouses on Wednesday.

• Follow Ted Daniel’s live updates from court

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is accused of hitting O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV in Canton on Jan. 29, 2022, and leaving him to die in a snowstorm after a night of drinking. The defense has sought to portray Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the Albert family home and dragged outside.

Read’s attorneys will first appear in Boston’s John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, where they’re expected to ask a judge to declare her upcoming retrial a violation of her constitutional rights.

The defense team has argued that their client’s double jeopardy protections were violated because several jurors who came forward after a mistrial was declared in her first trial indicated that Read was found not guilty of two of the three charges she faces in O’Keefe’s death, second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly crash.

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Read is also charged with manslaughter.

The push to drop Read’s charges was denied by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in February, upholding Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone’s initial decision to reject the motion to dismiss.

Read’s lawyers are now hopeful a federal judge will rule in their favor before her retrial begins on April.

After departing federal court, Read and her team will return to court in Dedham for a continuation of Tuesday’s pre-retrial hearing.

In court on Tuesday, special prosecutor Hank Brennan announced that the federal investigation into the Read case was officially over, confirming what 25 Investigates first reported last week.

“The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office was contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Let me make crystal clear, they made clear that I could inform the court there is no longer any federal investigation into the investigation of John O’Keefe’s death or any related matters,” Brennan said. “It is closed, it is over.”

Read’s defense claims the feds haven’t shared this development with them and that their last update came via a letter in January.

After informing the court of the closure of the federal investigation, Brennan requested that a gag order be imposed on all of Read’s attorneys, saying that their “ongoing, deliberate, purposeful poisoning of the potential jury pool” needs to come to an end.

Federal investigation into Karen Read murder case is over, special prosecutor confirms in court

“The Commonwealth asks the court to consider sanctions so that we can have a fair trial. What I suggest is that from now until trial, all pleadings submitted by the defense should be under seal,” Brennan said. “No more symposiums on the courthouse stairs, no more interviews with national media, no more statements to press privately behind the scenes over a coffee and putting out information, often times inaccurate, to sell the story before the trial starts so we can have a trial based on fact.”

Brennan’s gag order request comes after the defense filed a 147-page motion to dismiss the case against Read based on the “basis of extraordinary governmental misconduct,” accusing the Commonwealth of “destroying exculpatory evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence, and interfering with the jury.”

It also comes after Read, sitting alongside attorney Alan Jackson, told Boston 25′s Ted Daniel that she has “nothing to hide” and that she’s “been framed” for murder in an exclusive one-on-one interview.

The second murder trial in the state’s case against Read is scheduled to begin with jury selection in Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday, April 1.

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