The Commonwealth's Evidence against Karen Reed
The Exhibit List is in. Here are my general impressions.
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Jury selection is underway in Massachusetts in the case of Commonwealth v. Karen Read. Karen Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, by backing into him with her car after dropping him off outside of the home of a Boston Police Officer, Brian Albert. But nobody saw it happen, and pretty much all of the material facts are in dispute, from whether his injuries are consistent with being hit by a car to whether his Apple health data proves he went into the Alberts’ home to when various witnesses first learned of his death. I talked about the case and gave a broad overview of the parties’ respective positions here:
In the next day or two, we are likely to hear opening statements and the first of the Commonwealth’s evidence. Discovery has continued up to the eleventh hour, with the Commonwealth producing additional videos and an expert file on Tuesday, the first day of trial. Now the exhibit list has been filed, and we are finally getting to see what, exactly, the State’s case will consist of.
What we can see from this exhibit list is that the Commonwealth is betting on the forensic evidence supporting its theory of the case.
The car data.
They have a few different types of vehicle history data from Karen’s SUV - the Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) download that pulls from the vehicle’s Event Data Recorder, and the Techstream, ACM, and VCH data, which pull from other parts of the vehicle’s computer like the Engine Control Unit, safety systems, and diagnostic systems. These systems can often capture data resulting from hard acceleration, sudden deceleration, airbag deployment, and similar events that happen in a crash. However, collisions with pedestrians don’t involve the same kinds of forces as collisions with other vehicles, so these systems may not always be triggered when a person is hit by a car. Presumably, the Commonwealth is going to call an expert to posit that the data is consistent with her vehicle striking John O’Keefe at about 12:30 a.m. on January 29, 2022, as well as explain what the data suggests about the mechanism of the collision.
A number of exhibits also appear to relate to Karen Read’s taillight, from the taillight pieces recovered from the scene to photos and diagrams of the scene and the vehicle. According to the Commonwealth, surveillance videos, Ring video from John O’Keefe’s home, and police bodycam videos will show that Karen Read’s taillight was broken before they seized the vehicle, countering defense claims that police broke her taillight and planted the pieces at the scene. It remains to be seen how clearly these videos depict the taillight - surveillance videos in particular are notoriously low quality and low-light video from a Ring camera during the early morning hours would also not be expected to show a lot of detail. I would expect the bodycam videos to provide the clearest view of the condition of the taillight.
Lastly, a vehicle testing video by the Massachusetts State Police could be many things, but it suggests some accident reconstruction testing. Testing is sometimes done in the seized vehicle to check visibility, braking, and acceleration and deceleration rates. Because the Commonwealth has indicted Karen for intentional murder, I have to assume they will try to show that she would have been able to see John O’Keefe from her car, suggesting that therefore she hit him intentionally. Some public reports indicate that the police tested her backup camera to confirm it was working; it is likely this video would document that testing.
The autopsy.
Autopsy photos, death certificates, medical records documenting hospital treatment, and medical examiner diagrams are all routine pieces of evidence in a homicide and it is no surprise that the Commonwealth is offering them here. The questions will be exactly what injuries were documented in the autopsy and whether those injuries are consistent with being struck by a car and killed in the mechanism suggested by the crash data.
The location data.
The Commonwealth is offering location data for both John O’Keefe and Karen Read. For Karen, they have cell site location data and Round Trip Time (RTT) data. In general, cell site data is not necessarily very precise or accurate, because cell tower ranges can be large and phones can fail to connect to the nearest tower for a number of reasons, but triangulation between multiple towers allows for greater precision. RTT data is used in triangulation as it allows the analyst to calculate the phone’s distance to multiple towers and place the phone in relation to each of them. Offering this data suggests the Commonwealth has done a triangulation analysis of Karen Read’s phone. However, the significance of that information remains to be seen as triangulation can’t typically locate a phone more precisely within a few hundred feet, so it is unlikely it would be able to detect movements of the car associated with a collision. At best, I suspect it may be able to show the approximate times Karen arrived at and left the scene.
For John O’Keefe, the Commonwealth is offering GPS data. GPS data is, again generally, far more precise than cell site location data, usually accurate to within several feet. Because of its greater accuracy, GPS data from a cell phone carried in a pocket would be expected to show if the person traveled a long enough distance to enter a home from the roadway, and potentially movement from being struck by a vehicle at high speed and thrown.
Cell phone extractions.
Cellebrite can pull a massive amount of information from a cell phone, including user and contact information, messages, web queries, location data, and even deleted files. The individuals owning the phones in question, besides Karen and John, are Jennifer McCabe and Kerry Roberts, two witnesses who searched for John with Karen in the early morning hours and ultimately found his body around 6:00 a.m. in Brian Albert’s front yard. We already know that the defense contends that Jennifer McCabe searched “hos [sic] long to die in cold” at 2:27 a.m., hours before Karen alerted her that John had not come home, and deleted multiple texts and calls to other witnesses including Brian Albert. And we know that the Commonwealth contends that Karen left a voicemail on John’s phone the night he died screaming that she hated him. We’ll likely also get the communications of Karen, Jennifer, and Kerry the next morning to show the progress of their search for John.
Unlike the other witnesses, for Brian Higgins, the Commonwealth does not have a Cellebrite report but only a copy of a cell phone extraction of his communications. This is because, as we heard in the motions in limine last Friday, Mr. Higgins had a friend at the FBI extract what he deemed were relevant messages from his phone before then destroying it. My interest in this particular piece of evidence is in how the Commonwealth will authenticate it. Normally, the person who performed the extraction testifies to establish that it was done correctly and is complete. We’ll have to see if one of their witnesses is the agent who performed the extraction or if the Commonwealth simply relies on Brian Higgins to say what the messages were and how they were extracted, and if so, if Mr. Higgins has enough knowledge of the extraction process to establish that it was properly done.
Serum Conversion and Retrograde Extrapolation reports.
This evidence relates to calculations the Commonwealth will offer to try to prove Karen’s blood alcohol level at the time they contend the crash occurred, based on a measurement of her blood alcohol level taken hours later. This method generally assumes an average decline of blood alcohol over time and simply reverse engineers the BAC from the length of time between the test, the driving incident, and the last drink consumed. These calculations are usually presented in a range to account for individual differences in alcohol metabolism, and that leads to a bigger range the longer the time between the test and the moment the police are interested in. The test also assumes the individual didn’t drink any more alcohol between the moment of interest and the test, so testimony to the contrary can undermine the calculation entirely. Public reporting states that her BAC was between .07 and .08 at the time of the test, with a range of BACs from the time that she dropped off John about eight and a half hours earlier of .13 to .29 resulting from the retrograde extrapolation.
The BAC would be helpful to support the motor vehicle manslaughter charge, if the jury concludes that Karen did hit John with her car. But it may undermine the murder charge because it could suggest that she hit him because she was too drunk to operate her car, not because she was intentionally trying to hit him.
Overall impressions.
The quantity and types of forensic evidence being offered by the Commonwealth give the impression of an objectively strong case - still circumstantial, but many cases are and circumstantial cases can be very strong. The issues are going to be (1) whether the forensic evidence is sound, and (2) whether the pieces of forensic evidence are consistent with each other and with the Commonwealth’s theory of how the crime occurred.
On the first point, many forensic disciplines have been roundly criticized as not being scientific at all - feature-comparison techniques are often little more than a person looking at two items and opining that they look similar enough to each other to establish a match. The taillight comparisons may be subject to these kinds of challenges, and the video evidence should speak for itself - they will either be clear enough to show the condition of the taillight to the jury or they won’t, so we’ll have to see if the Commonwealth tries to bolster grainy footage by offering testimony from someone who claims to be able to see things in it that the rest of us don’t see.
On the second point, this is where I expect the bulk of the defense challenges to the Commonwealth’s evidence to occur, starting from the cause and manner of John O’Keefe’s death. If the injuries documented in the autopsy and the condition of his body are not consistent with being hit by a car at around 12:30 a.m., then the rest of the evidence loses much if not most of its significance - it doesn’t matter, for example, if the SUV’s recovered data shows a rapid acceleration near the time of the collision if the injuries he has wouldn’t have been caused by a vehicle strike.
I also notice that there is no DNA evidence on this list, or the purported human hair recovered from the bumper of Karen’s SUV. This seems significant to me because if the Commonwealth has reason to believe those items will support its theory, they would put them on the list even if full testing hasn’t been completed and provided to the defense. So I have to wonder if the testing that has been completed so far doesn’t support the Commonwealth’s theory, leading to its omission from the list.
I fully expect there will be counterevidence and opinions from the defense as to each item of forensic significance and they may be able that way to undermine each of the foundations of the Commonwealth’s case. But that is hard to do if the Commonwealth’s forensic case is strong. In part, this is because the jury has already heard the entire Commonwealth’s case before they can hear from the defense experts and will naturally develop an impression of its strength that can then color how they perceive the defense case. And in part, this is because the more undermining the defense has to do, the better chance they won’t have a strong counterargument and instead come across as simply trying desperately to poke holes in the case. So, the forensic case is a high risk, high reward strategy from the Commonwealth - if they can get through their case without major holes being blown in it on cross-examination, the jury may go into the defense case with an attitude of skepticism. Whether they can do so is the ultimate “if” that remains to be seen in the coming days.