Karen Read was seen relaxing with her married defence lawyer as the jury deliberated on whether she was guilty of murdering her police officer boyfriend.
Read, 44, and her attorney Alan Jackson, 59, were filmed hugging outside the upscale Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Boston on June 27.
At the time of their intimate embrace, jurors were deliberating whether Read murdered her boyfriend John O’Keefe, whom she allegedly hit with a car in the Canton area of Greater Boston in January 2022. A mistrial was declared Monday after jurors failed to reach a verdict.
The short clip shared on social media shows Read smiling as Jackson grabs her chest. The person who took the video said it looked “wrong and inappropriate.”
Karen Read was seen relaxing with her married defence lawyer Alan Jackson as a jury deliberated on whether she was guilty of murdering her police officer boyfriend.
Jackson, a prominent Los Angeles attorney, married Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Lisa Kassabian in 2011. He is seen with Read during her trial.
They said The New York Post‘It was just his lawyer, I don’t know what to call him. It seemed inappropriate for an attorney-client situation.’
Jackson is a prominent Los Angeles attorney who secured the acquittal of disgraced actor Kevin Spacey on sexual assault charges. He also represented disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in his rape trial in Los Angeles.
Jackson married Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Lisa Kassabian in 2011.
In an interview last year, the California attorney explained how he became “intrigued” by Read’s case.
“When I heard the full story of John’s death and saw some of the evidence, including the wounds on his right arm, I knew something was terribly wrong. I wanted to help,” she said. Boston.com“I got into this business to right wrongs and there was no way I could walk away from this case.”
The judge who declared the mistrial on Monday marked the end of a contentious nine-week court battle in which Read alleged she was the victim of a wide-ranging plot to frame her.
Prosecutors said Read ran over O’Keefe to end their toxic relationship before abandoning him in the snow thinking he was dead.
On the night of O’Keefe’s death, he and Read had been drinking with a group of friends at the Waterfall Bar and Grill in Canton, about 14 miles south of Boston, and were invited to their friend Brian Albert’s home for an after-party.
Read, who prosecutors say drank several alcoholic beverages earlier, decided to drop her boyfriend off at the after-party before heading home (which O’Keefe shared with her orphaned niece and nephew) to sleep around 1 a.m.
The person who took the video said the scene looked “wrong and inappropriate.”
Read and attorney Alan Jackson laugh after recess at Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham on May 2.
Jackson married Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Lisa Kassabian in 2011.
John O’Keefe, 46, was found dead at 6am on January 29, 2022, outside a house where Read dropped him off for an after-party at around 12.45am
Read and O’Keefe had been drinking the night of her death, before she drove him to an after-party while she went home to sleep. He was found dead on the lawn of the after-party house hours later.
Court documents revealed the pair had been arguing bitterly for weeks beforehand, and on the night O’Keefe died, Read left him a voicemail calling him a “fucking loser” and telling him, “John, I hate you.”
The couple had been together for two years when O’Keefe died. He had been with the Boston Police Department for 16 years.
According to Read’s version of events, she woke up at 4 a.m. to find that O’Keefe had never returned home, prompting her to drive frantically to try to find him.
After finding O’Keefe’s body outside Albert’s home, which partygoers claimed he never entered, first responders at the scene claimed Read repeatedly told them she hit him while in a panic.
Vehicle data also revealed Read reversed his SUV for 62 feet at 24 mph near Albert’s home. O’Keefe’s cause of death was blunt force trauma and hypothermia, and pieces of Read’s taillight were found around his body, prosecutors said.
In his closing arguments Tuesday, Norfolk County Deputy District Attorney Adam Lally said allegations that Read was framed were little more than “wild speculation.”
Lally also pointed to O’Keefe’s hair and DNA found in the back of Read’s truck.
The defense argued that the taillight was actually broken by Read when he panicked to look for O’Keefe when he never returned home.
This included surveillance video shown at trial showing Read crashing O’Keefe’s vehicle as she left her home to look for him.
Jackson is a prominent Los Angeles attorney who secured the acquittal of disgraced actor Kevin Spacey on sexual assault charges.
Read claimed he was beaten to death by after-party attendees, and his attorneys presented phone data showing O’Keefe’s phone was carried up dozens of stairs at the time he was allegedly hit.
His lawyer, Alan Jackson, claimed that those steps could have been the basement of Albert’s home. Albert was never charged with any crime.
Read’s attorneys added that while first responders claimed Read spoke of punching O’Keefe at the scene, they claimed this evidence was falsely presented at a later date and not mentioned at the time.
A forensic engineer was brought in to evaluate the case, who testified that if O’Keefe had been hit by a vehicle traveling more than 20 mph, he would expect to see more severe injuries.
When her trial began, Read received an outpouring of support from true crime fans who camped outside the courthouse with signs reading “Free Karen Read.”
Many began wearing pink in support of Read, prompting a judge to issue an order banning any clothing or accessories that could be perceived as encouraging and prohibiting them from coming within 200 feet of the courthouse.
As the trial dominated national headlines, some observers were disheartened by Read’s seemingly flippant attitude during the proceedings, leading to her being dubbed “America’s happiest murder defendant.”
She was seen winking at cameras and eating inside the courtroom, angering some critics.
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