Photo: Jay Willet/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Nearly five months after Karen Read was acquitted of murder, true crime author Casey Sherman sat down with the foreperson in her second trial, Charlie DeLoach, for a Q&A at Fisher College on Thursday.
“I think that the crowd got a real visceral look at what it was like to be the jury foreman in the most sensational murder trial in America in the last five years," Sherman said.
Read was accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him for dead in the snow in Canton in January of 2022. Her first criminal trial ended in mistrial. During her second trial, Read was found not guilty of the most serious charges against her, including second-degree murder.
During the discussion, DeLoach said the evidence the prosecution presented was "just shoddy" and didn't add up to him and the other jurors.
"First witness, when he recanted several times, he didn't know if [O'Keefe] had a jacket on or not and you're EMT," DeLoach said of the moment the case started to lean toward not guilty for him.
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There were too many questions for DeLoach and the other jurors, including about O'Keefe's warm body temperature despite blizzarding conditions. The jury was also not allowed to inquire about the Albert Family home in Canton where O'Keefe's body was found outside.
"I can't say who's lying or who's going along with the lie in a certain aspect. So just like anybody, you know, you don't want your family member in jail," DeLoach said.
Meantime, Sherman said it was his opinion Read "was completely overcharged. Had she been charged with manslaughter, nobody would even know the name Karen Read."
While Read was not convicted of murder, manslaughter, or leaving the scene, she was found guilty of OUI. DeLoach said the jury was actually split on the OUI charge at first. DeLoach didn't want to convict Read of it but feared a hung jury and co-signed the verdict.
DeLoach said he grew up in the Boston projects and has had a distrust of police since he was a kid and believes there was corruption and faulty investigating. Being on the jury for this trial has left him with a negative outlook of the judicial system.
DeLoach said he is currently writing a book about his experience on the jury.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Jay Willett (@JayWilletWBZ) reports: