Boston, MA
Boston prosecutors ask state supreme court for Karen Read murder retrial
Prosecutors have called on the state’s highest court to allow them to retry Karen Read for murder in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, arguing against defense claims that jurors had reached a verdict against some of her charges before the judge declared a mistrial.
Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in January 2022. Read’s attorneys argue she is being framed and that other law enforcement officers are responsible for O’Keefe’s death. A judge declared a mistrial in June after finding that jurors could not reach agreement. A retrial on the same charges is set to begin in January.
In a brief filed late on Wednesday to the Massachusetts supreme judicial court, prosecutors wrote that there was no basis for dismissing the charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of the accident.
There was “no viable alternative to a mistrial”, they argued in the brief, noting that the jury said three times that it was deadlocked before a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors said the “defendant was afforded a meaningful opportunity to be heard on any purported alternative.
“The defendant was not acquitted of any charge because the jury did not return, announce, and affirm any open and public verdicts of acquittal,” they wrote. “That requirement is not a mere formalism, ministerial act, or empty technicality. It is a fundamental safeguard that ensures no juror’s position is mistaken, misrepresented, or coerced by other jurors.”
In the defense brief filed in September, Read’s lawyers said five of the 12 jurors came forward after her mistrial saying they were deadlocked only on a manslaughter count, and they had agreed unanimously – without telling the judge – that she was not guilty on the other counts. They argued that it would be unconstitutional double jeopardy to try her again on the counts of murder and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death.
Oral arguments will be heard from both sides on 6 November.
In August, the trial judge ruled that Read could be retried on all three counts. “Where there was no verdict announced in open court here, retrial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” the judge Beverly Cannone wrote.
Read’s attorney, Martin Weinberg, argued that under Cannone’s reasoning, even if all 12 jurors were to swear in affidavits that they reached a final and unanimous decision to acquit, this would not be sufficient for a double jeopardy challenge. “Surely, that cannot be the law. Indeed, it must not be the law,” Weinberg wrote.
The American Civil Liberties Union supported the defense in an amicus brief. If the justices do not dismiss the charges, the ACLU said the court should at least “prevent the potential for injustice by ordering the trial court to conduct an evidentiary hearing and determine whether the jury in her first trial agreed to acquit her on any count”.
“The trial court had a clear path to avoid an erroneous mistrial: simply ask the jurors to confirm whether a verdict had been reached on any count,” the ACLU wrote in its brief. “Asking those questions before declaring a mistrial is permitted – even encouraged – by Massachusetts rules. Such polling serves to ensure a jury’s views are accurately conveyed to the court, the parties, and the community – and that defendants’ related trial rights are secure.”
Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy found O’Keefe had died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense portrayed Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s home and then dragged outside. They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.
The lead investigator, the state trooper Michael Proctor, was relieved of duty after the trial revealed he had sent vulgar texts to colleagues and family, calling Read a “whack job” and telling his sister he wished Read would “kill herself”. He said his emotions had got the better of him.
The good news for Marco Sturm and the Bruins is that the team could get defenseman Henri Jokiharju back in action Tuesday night in Seattle.
But the potential return of Jokiharju, who has been out of Boston’s lineup since sustaining an injury back on Nov. 28, does not give Sturm a healthy blue line. Instead, the Bruins are apparently dealing with yet another injury ahead of Jokiharju’s return to action, this time with Hampus Lindholm back on the shelf with an injury.
And one that certainly sounds concerning based on what Sturm said.
“It’s not going to be a day-to-day thing,” Sturm, whose team is on a three-game point streak, said following Monday’s practice when asked about Lindholm’s injury status. “Hopefully it’s not too long, but he’s definitely going to be out for a little bit. We’ll have to do more testing when we’re back in Boston so we can go from there.”
Sturm added that Lindholm has “been hurt,” though it’s unclear if he meant that Lindholm has been hurt in the last contest if he’s been playing hurt for the last little bit here. Lindholm did finish Saturday’s game without issue (at least one that was visible), and finished with an assist and logged a pair of overtime shifts in a 22:47 night.
Lindholm is also less than a week removed from what was one of his best games of the season, with a goal and an assist in Boston’s 6-2 win over the Oilers last Wednesday.
Lindholm has not traveled back to Boston ahead of schedule, though that admittedly means very little with just one more game on deck for the B’s on this road trip.
“We just had our first appointment [Sunday] and we’re going to wait until we get back because there’s nothing we can do right now,” Sturm said when discussing Lindholm’s injury. “And then we’ll let our doctors decide our next steps.”
Lindholm, who has three goals and 14 points through 34 games this year, has already missed eight games due to a lower-body injury earlier this season.
Sturm noted that Jokiharju looked “pretty good,” which is a positive development when it comes to his potential availability for Tuesday against the Kraken. If Jokiharju is unable to go, Vladislav Kolyachonok would slide back into the Boston lineup.
The Bruins come into Tuesday’s head-to-head with the Kraken with five of a possible eight points on this road trip banked away, but are a woeful 2-6-0 with Lindholm on the shelf this season.
Police are investigating a deadly shooting that occurred overnight in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood.
Boston police said they responded to a report of a person shot in the area of 24 Stow Road in Mattapan around 12:12 a.m. on Monday.
When they arrived, officers found a vehicle parked in front of 24 Stow Road with a man inside suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Boston EMS transported the man to a local hospital, where he later died.
No arrests have been announced.
The shooting remains under investigation, and anyone with information is being asked to call homicide detectives at 617-343-4470. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling 1-800-494-TIPS, texting the word “TIP” to 27463 or online.
In 2021, 60 Minutes visited the offices of robotics company Boston Dynamics and met an early model of its humanoid robot, Atlas.
It could run, jump and maintain its balance when pushed. But it was bulky, with stiff, mechanical movements.
Now, Atlas can cartwheel, dance, run with human-like fluidity, twist its arms, head and torso 360 degrees, and pick itself up off of the floor using only its feet.
“They call it a humanoid, but he stands up in a way no human could possibly stand up,” correspondent Bill Whitaker told Overtime. “His limbs can bend in ways ours can’t.”
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter told Whitaker that Atlas’ “superhuman” range of motion is keeping with the company’s vision for humanoid robots.
“We think that’s the way you should build robots. Don’t limit yourself to what people can do, but actually go beyond,” Playter said.
Whitaker watched demonstrations of the latest Atlas model at Boston Dynamics’ headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Rather than turning around to walk in the other direction, Atlas can simply rotate its upper torso 180 degrees.
“For us to turn around, we have to physically turn around,” he told Overtime. “Atlas just pivots on his core.”
Boston Dynamics’ head of robotics research, Scott Kuindersma, told Whitaker that Atlas doesn’t have wires that cross its the joints of the limbs, torso and head, allowing continuous rotation for tasks and easier maintenance of the robot.
“The robot’s not really limited in its range of motion,” Kuindersma told Whitaker. “One of the reliability issues that you often find in robots is that their wires start to break over time… we don’t have any wires that go across those rotating parts anymore.”
Another upgrade to the Atlas humanoid robot is its AI brain, powered by Nvidia chips.
Atlas’ AI can be trained to do tasks. One way is through teleoperation, in which a human controls the robot. Using virtual reality gear, the teleoperator trains Atlas to do a specific task, repeating it multiple times until the robot succeeds.
Whitaker watched a teleoperation training session. A Boston Dynamics’ machine learning scientist showed Atlas how to stack cups and tie a knot.
Kuindersma told Whitaker robot hands pose a complex engineering problem.
“Human hands are incredible machines that are very versatile. We can do many, many different manipulation tasks with the same hand,” Kuindersma said.
Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas has only three digits on each hand, which can swing into different positions or modes.
“They can act as if they were a hand with these three digits, or this digit can swing around and act more like a thumb,” Kuindersma said.
“It allows the robot to have different shaped grasps, to have two-finger opposing grasp to pick up small objects. And then also make its hands very wide, in order to pick up large objects.”
Kuindersma said the robot has tactile sensors on its fingers, which provide information to Atlas’ neural network so the robot can learn how to manipulate objects with the right amount of pressure.
But Kuindersma said there is still room to improve teleoperation systems.
“Being able to precisely control not only the shape and the motion, but the force of the grippers, is actually an interesting challenge,” Kuindersma told Whitaker.
“I think there’s still a lot of opportunity to improve teleoperation systems, so that we can do even more dexterous manipulation tasks with robots.”
Whitaker told Overtime, “There is quite a bit of hype around these humanoids right now. Financial institutions predict that we will be living with millions, if not billions, of robots in our future. We’re not there yet.”
Whitaker asked Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter if the humanoid hype was getting ahead of reality.
“There is definitely a hype cycle right now. Part of that is created by the optimism and enthusiasm we see for the potential,” Playter said.
“But while AI, while software, can sort of move ahead at super speeds… these are machines and building reliable machines takes time… These robots have to be reliable. They have to be affordable. That will take time to deploy.”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Scott Rosann.
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