Cops, cops, and more cops.
What interests are conflicting?
The defense did a good job of selling (un)reasonable doubt. From reports I heard, they argued that:
- The dog did it.
- The police killed him and then authorities engaged in a massive conspiracy to pin it on Read.
- The dog and police conspired together.
Good cite here-
I have no dog in this hunt.
I’m not suggesting a civil suit, I’m contrasting the legal difference. Often court costs are awarded as a penalty to an unsuccessful lawsuit as a deterrent, nominally to deter frivolous lawsuits but in practice it has a damping effect on all suits because of you can’t afford your own lawyers unless you win, you can’t afford the other side’s if you lose.
Whereas, short of deliberate malfeasance on the part of the prosecution, financial reimbusement for a failed prosecution is not going to happen.
If she’s an alternate juror then she wasn’t part of any deliberations. She has no more knowledge than anyone who attended every day of the first trial.
Her interests as a juror are not the same as her interests as the defendant’s lawyer. For instance, if this is allowed, it would be possible for a juror to force a mistrial for purpose of trying to drum up work on the retrial.
I’ll admit that her being only an alternate does mitigate this considerably, but it still looks hinky, and conflict of interest rules are supposed to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.
I don’t think she had any interests as a juror following the end of the first trial. It looks like she did everything above board and the prosecution could have brought up any actual conflict in the second trial. Serving on a jury shouldn’t disqualify anyone from joining interests with parties of the trial in the future and disclosure should eliminate any appearance of impropriety problems.
OTOH, the rules of the game were established by a bunch of lawyers in the legislature and upheld by more lawyers on state boards, and as usual they design the rules in their favor. This case intensifies the odor that lingers on all of the self designed and regulated practice of law.
This is an example of a juror with a conflict of interest:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-most-notorious-former-juror-behind-bars-1.165560
Gillian Guess has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for obstructing justice. The B.C. woman was convicted in June after admitting she had an affair with a man accused of murder while she was sitting on the jury.
Hey! That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t convict!
She was an alternate juror on the first trial, which is concluded.
So last night I binged the 5 part HBO docuseries about the first trial (obviously slanted towards the defense’s position), and my take is that the prosecution seriously misjudged their case for a Murder 2 charge and that’s where everything went off the rails.
I think Karen Read probably did hit him with her car, but as a juror I would have reasonable doubt that that’s what led to John O’Keefe’s death. Everyone was so absolutely shitfaced that night, in a just world they all would have had the book thrown at them. But since Karen was the only non-cop-affiliated one, they instead circled the wagons and doomed themselves by making it all about how crazy she was.
For all I know John slipped, hit his head, passed out and froze to death because he was drunk. There’s not enough evidence to link the damage to the car to a cause of death. The documentary didn’t go into excruciating detail about how much they all drank, but it seemed substantial, at which point they grabbed their drinks “to go” (i.e, they stole their cocktail glasses in the process), and drove a few miles completely drunk. The owners of the house saw that Karen’s SUV was there but didn’t seem to alarmed by the fact that nobody ever came inside; instead they went upstairs, banged it out and fell asleep.
I think they tried to pin it all on Karen just to avoid their own culpability, both legally and morally. I don’t know if they planted or doctored any evidence, or if anyone lied on the stand, but the reality is so far from “crazy girlfriend runs over her boyfriend in murderous rage” that you have to wonder where the adults were in the DA’s office.
Thanks for this. It sounds like it was a drunken night with a bunch of people old enough to know better, they might have been able to prove a lesser charge if the other people in the house were honest about that night.
The night would have made for a great episode of “Boston Shore”.
Police don’t party and drink that heavily, do they? (he said with a straight face)
Maybe the police had it in for her, but why the prosecutor - so much as to try a second time?
Political pressure from the police lobby.
At least a couple possibilities (1) prosecutors work with police and so might want to avoid their tantrums if they decline to prosecute, (2) prosecutors often get tunnel vision themselves (recall the exonerated five), and (3) maybe the defense was really just that good (as in, there really was plenty of evidence of her guilt, but the defense put on a good show and introduced enough reasonable doubt to get her off).
I did see on wiki that there was already an effort to bring a civil complain pt against her by the family of the deceased, but a court rules that the civil trial had to wait for the criminal trial to be resolved. So I guess we’ll see where this goes next.
The prosecutors are freaking terrified of the police, in my experience. This is not a TV show where there is all this professional separation between police and prosecutors. They are closer than lips and teeth. I live in a cop town (suburb with a large number of police living there who work in more “urban” areas). I have two friends who are elected DAs (well, one is now a judge).
Google the case of Sandra Birchmore which involved the police of an adjacent town to the Karen Read one. Basically everyone conspired to bury the murder of a woman who had been sexually exploited by the police from the time she was a minor. It’s only being investigated and prosecuted now because the feds got involved.