How jury selection will work in Karen Read's high-profile second trial
After months of pretrial hearings and multiple appeals, Karen Read's second trial is set to begin in Dedham, Massachusetts on Tuesday.
The beginning of trial does not mean opening statements and witness testimony, but what will likely be a lengthy jury selection process.
Read is accused of hitting and killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow outside a Canton home in January 2022. She has pleaded not guilty to all three charges against her and says several people, including law enforcement, are trying to frame her. Read's first trial ended in 2024 with a mistrial due to a hung jury.
Karen Read second trial
Judge Beverly Cannone, who oversaw Read's first trial and is presiding over her second, has indicated concern that jury selection could take weeks.
"I think it's going to take a very long time to find a jury," Cannone said in Read's final pretrial conference on March 25. "Many, if not most, if not all jurors have heard about this case."
Pretrial publicity – including the growing popularity of the "Free Karen Read" movement – posed a challenge for Read's first trial. Over the course of five court days in April 2024, more than 400 prospective jurors were screened for Read's first trial. Of them, about 75% percent had seen, heard of, or discussed this case.
Given Read's media interviews, recent documentary series, and the growing popularity of her trial since 2024, finding a jury could be much harder.
The court doesn't look for jurors who know nothing about the case, but rather, those who can demonstrate they have not formed an opinion and can be impartial.
How will Karen Read jury selection work?
To prepare for Read's second trial, the Office of the Jury Commissioner has called more than 1,000 people for jury duty in the first week alone.
Jurors will be given an additional one-page questionnaire for this trial that focuses exclusively on pretrial publicity.
On Tuesday, April 1, more than 200 prospective jurors will report to Norfolk Superior Court for jury duty. Judge Cannone estimated that it will take about 90 minutes for them to fill out their forms, get the forms copied, and have the lawyers process them.
With approval from prosecutors and defense attorneys, Cannone plans to send the last 50 or so jurors home for the day. She will then call them back the following day so that when the next round of jurors is filling out their questionnaires, the court can maximize time by privately interviewing prospective jurors from the day before.
How long will Karen Read jury selection take?
In previous pretrial hearings, Cannone indicated that opening statements in the case may not start until the end of April.
That prediction puts this second trial on the exact same timeline as the first, despite previous predictions it may be a shorter trial.
Like in the first trial, prosecutors have estimated about four or five weeks to try their case, and defense attorneys predicted about two weeks. The same was true last year, but the trial actually lasted for nearly 10 weeks, ending in a mistrial on July 1, 2024.
WBZ-TV will be able to record – and stream live – Judge Cannone's early instructions on the first day of jury selection. However, once jurors are individually being privately interviewed by lawyers and the judge, the cameras must be turned off.
