Law&Crime Sidebar - 9 Alarming Details from Karen Read Jurors About Jaw-Dropping Verdict

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Karen Read was recently acquitted of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, back in 2022. This was Read’s second trial, after the first ended with a hung jury. After the verdict, several jurors spoke with local and national media outlets about how they came to their decision. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the potential implications of their statements with trial attorney Rich Schoenstein.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Check out Odoo to take your manufacturing process to the next level! Get a free 15-day trial today at: https://www.odoo.com/lcsidebarmanufacturingHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. And the second thing I want to say is no one has fought harder for justice for John O'Keefe than I have. Screaming fans drowned out a grateful Karen Reed. after she was found not guilty of killing her boyfriend Boston police officer John O'Keefe. This was the second jury to hear the case after a mistrial last year. But comments made by some of the jurors after the verdict, definitely raising eyebrows in the legal community.

Trial attorney Rich Schoenstein, who's been following the case, is in our studio right now to talk about it all. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. A week ago, June 18th. A jury made up of seven women and five men announced its verdict in the Karen Reed murder retrial. Not guilty of second-degree murder, not guilty of motor vehicle manslaughter, and not guilty leaving the scene of an accident causing death. She was found guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol. Now, prosecutors had accused Karen Reid of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car in 2022, leaving him to die in the snow outside of a friend's home after a night out drinking.

Reid has always maintained her innocence, saying she didn't strike him and didn't realize he hadn't gone into the home when she dropped him off until she later found him dead in the snow. Now, this is a case that drew significant attention, partly because of the defense's theory that O'Keefe had actually been beaten up inside the home and dumped outside with a corrupt police department covering up the whole thing. When her first trial ended with a hung jury, the fervor only increased with people around the world weighing in on what they think. actually happened here. And after a week's long trial and days of deliberations, this jury had a verdict. So say you, Mr. Foreman? So say you all? Zero, zero three. What say is the defendant at the bar leaving the scene after accident resulting in deaths, defendant not guilty or guilty? So say you, Mr. Foreman? So say you all? Yes. Jurors, hearken your verdict as the court records, You, upon your oath, say the defendant on 001 is not guilty.

On 002 is guilty of operating the influence of liquor and zero zero three not guilty. Thank you. All right, jurors, everybody please be seated. Juris, we thank you for your service. We're going to send you back to services. So, Reed was sentenced to a year of probation on the DUI charge. She was free to go, although she was also out on bail for both the original trial and the retrial. But the point being, she was found not guilty of the most serious charges, right?

Now, even from inside the courtroom, you could hear cheers from the crowd outside as the verdict started to reach them. A huge crowd gathered throughout the trial, many wearing pink, Reed's favorite color, shouting free Karen Reed, others held signs showing support for the police and John O'Keeb's family. So there was division here. There was certainly division. To give you an idea, by the way, of the rabid support for Karen Reid, this is the reaction that she and her attorneys were met with when they left the courthouse following the verdict. However, here is what we want to get into. Something that we expected would happen. In the week, since the trial ended, several members of the jury have spoken to local and national

media outlets about how they reached their decision. Okay? To talk about it, I want to bring on somebody who has not only followed the trial, but who's also been quite vocal about the Karen Reid trial, back with us here on studio, here on sidebar, attorney, litigator, Rich. So, Rich, good to see you. Thanks for taking the time. Great to be here.

Thank you, Jesse. So before we even get into the jurors' reactions, and we're going to take it piece by piece, what was your reaction to the verdict? Was it the right decision? It was certainly within a reasonable realm of possibilities with the trial. And let me begin with this.

You know, my thoughts are still with the family and friends of John O'Keefe. This is apparently a great human being who was killed prematurely, and I totally understand that the people who loved him and care about him and even people who just know about the case are feeling unsatisfied because there is no conviction of anybody for what appears to be a crime. But I do think that the verdict by the jury, I totally understand why the jury found reasonable doubt. There was reasonable doubt findable on the question of whether or not he was hit by a car at all. Not to mention whether or not

being hit by a car is actually what caused his death. I also always thought that because of the mistakes and in some instances bias of the investigation, that a jury could conclude, we just don't have confidence in this evidence. We find reasonable doubt just, just because of that. And for some combination of those reasons, the jury found reasonable doubt, and I think they were entitled to do so on the record. Hey, so look, I know you guys might be interested

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on the jury at all? Do you think it's impossible that they could ignore what was happening? Look, I don't know. They tried to screen it out during jury selection. They tried to find jurors who didn't have predispositions on the case, who certainly weren't part of the groups on one side or another advocating for the case. They really tried to screen that out in jury selection. They told them stay off your social media for all six weeks of the trial. They told them not to watch any coverage. All this stuff that we say to the jury, did it work 100%.

I mean, usually I think jurors abide those instructions as best they can. There was a huge crowd outside, but never as big as it was the day the verdicts came out. I mean, there was never a crowd like that that the jury had to encounter until the verdict was read. So I don't know if it affected them. So I want to talk now about what was maybe happening behind closed doors. We have an idea of what happened during these secret jury deliberations because a few jurors have spoken out, which, by the way, they have every right to do. You know, judges tend to give jurors a heads up at the end of a trial that members of the media might want to reach out to them, particularly in a case like this. It's their decision whether they want to or not.

They're not obligated to. So first, we have the jury's foreman. Now, he didn't give his name when he spoke to the Today Show this week, but he had a lot of interesting things to say. Quote, Karen Reed is innocent, and she didn't do this crime. No one could prove that she did this crime, so I looked at her from day one as an innocent woman that needed to be proven guilty, and I don't think any of that was shown in this process. Now, of course, that's the basis of our legal system, innocent and so proven guilty. But he went on to say, collectively together, we looked at all the evidence that was presented,

and we made our decision off of that. At first, some had their own personal opinions on what the case should be or whatever. It was trying to go down, like personal feelings and stuff like that. And we had to stick to what evidence we had in front of us and go with that. So it was more or less just trying to figure out that part. It was the whole case altogether, all the pieces, the testimony, witnesses, and just a lot of it together. People had questions, and we used the evidence to answer their questions. and we didn't try to go down these rabbit holes where we're just getting lost in all these

other things that were thrown at us in court or whatever. We just had to lock down and figure it out through the evidence. When I came in on Monday, I just wanted everyone to feel like they're heard 100% and everyone felt at the end of the deliberations that everyone felt good about the decision that we all collectively came together with. Rich, you have any issue with this? No. I have zero issue.

And I want to start with what he starts with because I heard some people say, he was bias because he thought she was not guilty from day one. No, that's what the jurors are supposed to think on day one. When you're a jury in a criminal trial, you're supposed to treat the defendant as not guilty until the government proves their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And that's what that foreman said he did. And then the rest of the stuff is just about the deliberative process, which, by the way, they deliberated for four days, they asked multiple questions.

They obviously took the case very seriously. All of the reports from the trial said they were attentive, they were note takers. There's no reports of jurors dozing off or not paying attention. You know, they were engaged, and the foreman's comments, to me, just verify that. Isn't it interesting that he didn't come out and say prosecution didn't meet their burden? It's that she didn't do it. She's innocent. That's different.

So, and we'll get into this more with other comments. In other words, she didn't hit John O'Keefe, not, you know, I think she hit him, but the prosecution just didn't prove it. That's a difference. That's significant. So the people who have spoken out have seemed to be strongly of the view that she didn't do it. And what I don't know is if all 12 jurors were that strongly of that view, or some of them thought she probably did do it, but there's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And I'm told I can't render- Because that's a standard. Because that's a standard.

I can't render a guilty verdict without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't know how all 12 jurors, but plainly at least a few of them really believe it's not her fault. Juror number four, a man named Jason, kind of put it pretty simply in an interview with TMZ saying, all I know is is that there was a lot of holes in the investigation, which Rich is interesting because defense attorneys make that argument in criminal cases all the time. A sloppy investigation, a tainted investigation. this one was different, right? Sure. So two things about this. Number one, this was a very wealthy defendant

who had one of the premier criminal defense teams you'll ever see at trial. She had an experienced Massachusetts criminal defense lawyer. She had one of the preeminent trial lawyers in America brought in from California, and she had a great, great lawyer from New York who came in and did a bunch of the expert stuff and was tremendous in this second trial.

She had about as good a defense team as you can have for what's essentially a hit-and-run case, right? Also, the investigation did have a lot of holes. The investigator obviously concluded immediately that she had done it. He said horrible things about her and his communications with his friends, but also with his coworkers who were involved in the investigation. So it was tainted, it was biased. was some sloppiness in the investigation. The weather, it was in the middle of a blizzard, so that made the investigation very difficult.

Yeah, a lot of holes that someone could find. I want to go more into some of the comments from the jurors. Have to make something clear, though, right? From a point of law, because she was acquitted, right, there's nothing that they could say. Even if they came out and said, yeah, our goal was to acquit her from the very beginning. Or even if Karen Reid comes out and says, no, I actually did it. she can't, there's no appellate issue, she can't be retried, there's double jeopardy, right? So it doesn't, it's interesting, but there's nothing the prosecution can do based on these statements.

Yeah, the juror misconduct, I've never heard. I mean, let's say that the worst fears turn out to be true. There were free Karen Reed plants in the jury, and they hijacked the jury and got a no get not guilty verdict. That's it. That's it. I mean, there's still civil litigation we can talk about for a long time. But in terms of a criminal trial, it's over. It's done.

It would be different if she was convicted and then finds out about juror misconduct, then she could. Yeah, if you're convicted in this juror misconduct, then you can get a mistrial after the fact. You can get it reversed, but not the prosecution. Let's talk about juror number 12. So juror number 12 publicly identified herself to local media as Janet Jimenez, a personal trainer from Medfield, Massachusetts. and she says she knew absolutely nothing about this case before she was called for jury duty, except maybe a passing mention from one of her clients. And she told WCVB Channel 5 in Boston, I was hoping that my fellow jurors could help me go through all this.

So I went in with a very open mind, but definitely leaning towards she was guilty. Hemenas told WCVB that looking through hundreds of pieces of evidence changed her mind because she was looking for something specific that pointed to Reed's guilt. She wouldn't tell the reporter what that something was, but says she didn't find it. What do you think is going on there? Well, I don't know. Listen, these jurors come from private life. They don't necessarily have any experience with the media or answering questions.

So I always take their comments through that lens, right? This is not an expert prepared statement of what this juror experience. The juror is saying, in essence, I didn't find a smoking gun. I didn't find something that really gripped me to prove that she did it. There was plenty of evidence in the trial tying her to what happened to John O'Keefe if she wanted to see it that way. And there were holes, as we've discussed. But she is saying it, she is phrasing it as, I just didn't get that what I really needed to find her guilty. Well, Janet went on to say, I'm not there to say the defense's story was right or wrong.

Do you know what I'm saying? Because there could have been other circumstances that happened. I think there were things that we saw, things that we heard, the evidence that it could have fit that scenario. So again, that's the whole doubt thing. I don't want to be like, oh, should I second guess myself? Because I'm very comfortable with how I came to the decision. So I guess it'll be part of my story. And then, according to juror Paula Prado, a lawyer from Brazil, there were two.

many inconsistencies in the investigation. She told WBZ News, I thought Karen Reid was actually maybe guilty of manslaughter in the beginning. But as the weeks passed by, I just realized there was too many holes that we couldn't fill. And there's nothing that put her on the scene in our opinion besides just dropping John O'Keefe off. Rich, you mentioned it before, there was evidence that she was there. I mean, there was evidence about her hitting him, right? Well, there was evidence. So the best evidence...

Yeah, what stands out to you? To me, the best evidence in the case for the prosecution were broken tail light pieces, including what appear to be broken tail light pieces embedded in the clothing of John O'Keefe. So that was very strong evidence, I thought. And the conduct of Karen Reid during the night and the morning, where she's calling up friends saying he's missing, and she tells one that she last saw him at the bar. And that friend says, no, you didn't. You dropped him off. And then she tells another one that maybe he got hit by a plow. And then they go to the scene and she runs right to where the body is. And then if we're to believe the testimony, she tells several different witnesses, some version of I hit him. Or could I have hit him or maybe I hit him. That to me, and then the one thing I left out of that, there's data that the car went in reverse, you know, 75 depressed on the accelerator, and the minute that stopped is when his phone stops moving.

His phone was interesting, also the temperature of the battery of the phone. Right. Well, it was found under him on cold ground, so I didn't know what to make of the temperature myself. But the fact that it supposedly coincided with the car going in reverse and the phone stopped being hit. So there was, you know, there was evidence that a jury could have tied together to find she did indeed hit him. I think generally speaking, though, you know, look, the defense did a phenomenal job. And whether it's through dog bite evidence or explaining a sloppy investigation or even something strange as, you know, Brian Albert not leaving the house when John O'Keefe is outside.

There's a lot of unexplained weird stuff in this case. Let me tell you why I think the defense, why I think they won and why I give them so much credit. You and I have talked about this case before. And in trial number one, the defense stood up in opening statement and, said Karen Reed was framed. And I thought that is a mistake. Because they were creating a burden of proof on their defense case. They were telling the jury, there are only two possibilities.

Either Karen Reid did it, or she was framed by a cooperative conspiracy of all of Massachusetts law enforcement. There was no reason for them to take on that burden of proof. And in the second trial, they didn't do that. They almost did. They were maybe doing third-party culprit. They were toying with it, but they said an opening statement, there was no collision. There was no collision.

There was no collision. And they rode that theory, and they rode reasonable doubt. And they hinted maybe something that happened in the house, right? But they didn't dwell on it. They didn't tie themselves to it. They didn't give themselves a burden of proof. They kept the burden of proof on the prosecution, and they kept on reasonable doubt. and that's what you're hearing from the jurors.

They decided this case, classically, on the government's failure to meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And Prado made what could be maybe some of the most controversial statements about the case. Why? Because she said during an interview with an NBC affiliate

that she was 100% convinced that Reed wasn't responsible for her boyfriend's death, but said, she thinks it's possible that Reed could have touched him somehow with her SUV? She said, quote, either he got out of her way or something and maybe he lost his shoes in the process but in my opinion he definitely went inside and something happened inside the house i don't know how

you i can reconcile that easily do you because you have to prove there was a collision and then you have to prove the collision caused his injury one of the most damning moments of the trial i thought was when the prosecution's own witness was asked by the way by the prosecutor Could he sustain an injury like that simply by falling backwards? And the doctor said yes. So one possibility maybe was that he was hit by the car, but it wasn't the cause of death. Something else happened.

He fell over. He got attacked by a dog, although I don't personally by the dog bite theory at all. But something else happened. And when you're only talking about reasonable doubt, there's enough there to interest the jurors. You know, she also said she felt sorry that justice wasn't served for John O'Keefe's family, saying, quote, I just want to tell them it's not our fault that Karen Reid was not convicted,

even if there is any chance that she's guilty of something or hurt him somehow, the Commonwealth or the investigators didn't do their jobs to prove that to us. That's fair. That's entirely fair. And I just want to say that juror that we're talking about now was viciously attacked on social media from the moment she started talking about the case. She has every right to talk about the case. She has more of a right to talk about the case than some of the idiots attacking her. And they said she has a language barrier.

She's not smart. She missed this piece of evidence. And just viciously attacking her, which I thought was totally unfair. And then on social media, she did a very good job standing up for herself and fighting back to some of the people who were attacking her. But it's not the jury's fault. If you're angry about Karen Reid not being convicted, you should be thinking about law enforcement. You should not be thinking about the jury. That's fair.

And look, I mean, social media is a cesspool anyway, so it's hard to really make sense of everything that goes on there. She did conclude the reason why I'm coming out and talking to people is to keep the flame going and the supporters going after the DA or whatever they have to do to reopen the case and find who really killed John O.ke. I mean, that's a statement. That's a statement that they believed that someone else killed him. Yeah. I mean, again, if you don't think Karen Reid's responsible, maybe someone else did it, maybe it was an accident. But remember, the law enforcement in Massachusetts has looked at this thoroughly over several years. Two different sets of prosecutors have looked at it. The FBI has looked at it, apparently. Nobody has wanted to prosecute anybody else. Nobody has thought that there was a prosecutable case against any other person.

So I don't see much chance of that happening. It's interesting you say that because if you think about who else might be responsible, what else could happen? Just because this trial is over doesn't mean the investigation is necessarily at an end. We weren't the only one surprised by some of the juror comments post verdict, special prosecutor Hank Brennan, who was brought in for this second trial, commented on the case five days after the jury handed down its decision. So on Monday, June 23rd, he released a statement saying in part, quote, that following an independent and thorough review of all the evidence, I concluded that the

evidence led to one person and only one person. Neither the closed federal investigation nor my independent review led me to identify any other possible suspect or person responsible for the death of John O'Keefe. And he called out what he thought, was witness intimidation. The campaign of intimidation and abuse that has been waged, funded, and promoted in public and on social media is the antithesis of justice. If this type of conduct becomes commonplace, it will threaten the integrity of our judicial system affecting both victims and criminally accused.

We cannot condone witness abuse, causing participants to worry for their own safety or that of their families. It is my hope that with the verdict, the witnesses and their families will be left alone. the harassment of these innocent victims and family members is deplorable and should never happen again in a case in this Commonwealth. That says a bunch of things there, Rich, right? It basically says, you know, we're not going after anybody else, or at least I'm not going after anybody else. Stop bothering the other people you think are responsible for this. I mean, there's a difference between this is what our investigation concluded. We didn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. This is

the end. And I think he makes a good point about not only this case, but any case. in general. This case is really interesting. I've been following it from the beginning. There are some proceedings in Massachusetts where there are allegations of witness harassment and intimidation, and those should go forward, and they'll come to whatever conclusion they come to against those people, right? I've seen in social media attacks on everybody. I've seen certainly attacks on the Alberts, on the McCabe's, on the people who were in that house who some people think are the real perpetrators. I've definitely seen that. I've seen attacks on the witnesses.

I've seen attacks on the paramedics. I've seen attacks on John O'Keefe's family. I've seen attacks on his mother and his brother and other family members. I've seen attacks on the children that he took in for his brother after his brother passed away. But I've also seen attacks on Karen Reid's family. I've seen attacks on her father. I've seen attacks on her lawyers. I've seen attacks on the prosecution's lawyers.

I've seen attacks on the lawyer who issued that statement. And now we're seeing attacks on the jury. Maybe stop attacking people. Maybe we don't need to attack any of these people. If you have an opinion about the case, huzzah, you can comment about the case, you can comment about the trial, you can say what you think happened, but why are we attacking anybody? And I, you know, I think there's some... Well, there are people who believe there is a grave injustice. There are people who believe the real killers are out there.

And there are people who want their podcasts to get a lot of viewers and find that going on the attack is a better way of doing that. That's fair. that's fair so there are people in both of those and there are people who just want to legitimately comment about the case because that's what they do well giving both sides so one of uh karen reeds defense attorneys alan jackson had a fiery response to mr brennan's statement saying he has tried to discredit the jury quote the jury has spoken but special prosecutor hank brendan in an egregious breach of prosecutorial ethics has tried to publicly shame and discredit that very jury for him to attempt to supplant his personal views for

that of the jury is a desperate attempt to save face in the wake of a unanimous rejection of the prosecution's case. The rules of professional conduct are clear. A prosecutor should support the legitimacy of the justice system and promote public confidence in its operations. Openly attacking a jury's verdict because he disagrees with it undermines that centuries-old edict. And he went on to say, the only job of an ethical prosecutor is to seek the truth in a just and fair manner. The Commonwealth fell widely short of that response. Theirs was not an effort to find justice for John O'Keefe. Rather, it was a personal vendetta against Karen Reed by DA Michael Morrissey and his handpicked prosecutors, and it cost the people

of Norfolk County millions. By the way, District Attorney Morrissey had very little to say about the verdict telling WBZ News, only that the jury has spoken. What do you make of that response from Alan Jackson? Well, I have a number of opinions about it. So Alan Jackson did a phenomenal job in this trial. He gave one of the great closing arguments I've ever seen. He got the win. He's the lead lawyer. I don't know about the righteous indignation. You know, that defense team, as good as they were, they were not squeaky clean, right? Some issues came up about the information they gave the court about their expert witnesses, that sparked some controversy. Certainly they were, of dispersing the theory that these other people were involved in killing John O'Keefe,

which I'm not sure there was always evidence to support, I don't know that either side can really take the high road. I didn't really think maybe Hank Brennan should have issued his statement. I don't think Alan Jackson needed to say quite so much in response. The trial is done. We know the outcome. Well, there you go. Look, I wanted to do this episode.

I wanted your reactions. because I know you've been following the case. You're also an excellent lawyer. So I wanted your opinion about what the jurors were saying, what the attorneys were saying. I don't know if this is the end of the conversation regarding the Karen Reed trial, but we shall see. Rich Schoenstein, such a pleasure.

Thanks so much for coming on. Happy to be here. All right. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.