Photo: Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio
DEDHAM, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Testimony in Day 16 of the Karen Read retrial has ended.
Testimony is expected to resume Friday.
Read is accused of fatally hitting her boyfriend, Officer John O'Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow in Canton in 2022. Read’s defense team has claimed she is innocent and is being framed.
Commonwealth medical examiner Dr. Irini Scordi-Bello testified about John O'Keefe's cause of death. She said that she could not definitively rule on the manner of death for O'Keefe. That wrapped up her testimony and jurors were released for the day.
Following direct examination by special prosecutor Hank Brennan, Bello was cross-examined by defense attorney Robert Alessi. She testified she found O’Keefe’s cause of death to be “blunt impact injuries of [the] head and hypothermia.” She went on to explain that she was unable to determine O’Keefe’s manner of death upon completion of the autopsy.
During Brennan's direct examination, Scordi-Bello went through the autopsy report from her analysis of O'Keefe's body. She testified she was not able to come to a conclusion about the cause of scrapes and and bruises found on O'Keefe's body.
Earlier in the day, Maureen Hartnett, a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab, returned to the stand. Read's attorneys continued to zero in on the evidence-collection methods utilized by state police on the scene. A relative amount of scrutiny has been placed on their use of red solo cups to procure blood samples from the snow outside of 34 Fairview Rd. in Canton.
Harnett also testified that the blood collected by authorities was never tested.
Last week, retired Canton Police Lt. Paul Gallagher defended his decision to use the cups, admitting they aren't typically used but "hold liquid terrifically."
During cross-examination, Read's attorney, Alan Jackson, pressed Gallagher on the possibility of contamination of the DNA. Although he conceded that the cups can't be sealed, he denied the evidence was tainted, claiming it would be difficult to contaminate DNA.
Gallagher also admitted that he had never seen an evidence log for the case after he submitted the blood samples, a practice that he calls standard procedure.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Drew Moholland (@DrewWBZ) has more.