Details Matter

Some thoughts on the holes in the prosecution's case against Karen Read

As I’ve written previously, I think the area where the prosecution really dropped the ball in the first Karen Read trial was in its presentation of the crash reconstruction evidence. A big part of the problem was the fact that Trooper Paul was not a good expert witness and was asked to do too much; he had neither the credentials nor the presentation skills to synthesize all of the relevant evidence into a clear picture for the jury. But Trooper Paul wasn’t the only problem.

Prior to Paul even taking the stand, the prosecution did a poor job of diagramming key elements of the crime scene. Core details, such as where the body was found relative to various landmarks in the yard, were not established with any precision. And this lack of precision opened the door to a number of defense arguments that mischaracterized the collision scenario the prosecution was positing.

I have no idea if Hank Brennan or anyone on his team will ever read this post, but on the off chance they do, I want to offer a few constructive thoughts.

Details matter, and one incredibly important detail in this case is where, precisely, John O’Keefe’s body was found. This detail is particularly important for evaluating the plausibility of a vehicular collision having caused his death. And yet the prosecution was never particularly clear about this in the first trial. It relied on imprecise and contradictory testimony from witnesses and confusing diagrams.

The origin of this uncertainty and imprecision is understandable. By the time any actual investigators arrived at the scene, O’Keefe had already been taken away in an ambulance. And the active blizzard helped obscure the scene from the moment he was moved.

But there is some relevant video evidence. If you watch the dashcam video of Officer Saraf’s arrival at the scene, you can see – at least for a few seconds – the image of Read, Roberts, and McCabe kneeling over O’Keefe’s body, trying to perform CPR. I’ve included a grainy screenshot below, but it’s a little easier to see if you watch the video.

Now here’s a google image of the same location, from roughly the same angle.

I’ve included a poorly drawn stick figure roughly where the body seems to be. As you can see, it appears that O’Keefe’s head was just a few feet in front of the flagpole and his feet were not all that far from the curb. Now there’s some discrepancy in the testimonies of Roberts and McCabe as to whether O’Keefe was rolled over at any point as they were tending to him. But given the pooling of blood on his back, it seems likely that he was lying on his back, in roughly that spot, for quite some time. At most, this spot is off by a foot or two in either direction.

What’s most notable to me about this location (and which was never really discussed during the trial) is the fact that O’Keefe’s head is either on or very near the edge of the grass. The location of his head is highly relevant to the question of what could have caused the fatal skull fracture on the back of his head.

At trial, the defense scoffed at the notion that impact with grass could have caused such an injury. But as you can see, there’s no reason to assume his head hit the grass.

Per the photo above and Trooper Paul’s diagram, it looks like the SERT team found O’Keefe’s missing shoe by the curb, somewhere between the fire hydrant and flagpole. I’ve added the approximate location of the shoe to the image below (in blue).

If we assume that O’Keefe lost his shoe at roughly the point of impact, it’s seems very plausible that his head could have first impacted the ground at or beyond the edge of the lawn (i.e., in the area that is covered in dirt and brush in the google image above) prior to his momentum carrying him to his final resting spot by the flagpole. Hitting your head on hard, frozen dirt is materially different than hitting your head on grass.

Moreover, it would be incredibly helpful if the prosecution could find contemporaneous photographic evidence of what that part of the yard looked like (without snow) in the winter of 2022. At some point in late 2023, I took a close, first- hand look at that specific part of the yard and observed several large, jagged rocks in the dirt area just beyond the edge of the lawn, the area I’ve circled in red in the google image below. I have no idea if those rocks were there back in January of 2022, but if they were, they absolutely seem like something capable of causing a gash like the one found on the back of O’Keefe’s head.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t think the prosecution needs to conclusively establish the exact mechanics of the collision. But I think they do have to articulate, through quality expert testimony, a plausible way in which it could have happened.

Something Else to Consider:

As I’ve mentioned before, I think both the prosecution and the defense may have been too quick to dismiss the possibility that Read’s taillight was first broken by O’Keefe throwing the cocktail glass at it from close range. This theory was posited by the ARCCA experts retained by the feds and their analysis found it to be mechanically plausible.

The defense seems to have dismissed this possibility because it’s inconsistent with their theory that all of the taillight evidence was planted by the police after the fact. As I’ve explained, I think this was a huge strategic blunder. The cocktail glass theory offered them a potential way of explaining almost all of the physical evidence without having to posit a vast, totally implausible law enforcement conspiracy. But they were so invested in their conspiracy theory that, by the time they got the federal evidence, it was apparently too late to recalibrate.

As for the prosecution, I can see why, from a strategic perspective, they were hesitant to give any credence to the cocktail glass theory. They likely learned about it for the first time mid-trial and were legitimately concerned it could open the door to reasonable doubt. But the reality is that the theory of the accident that the prosecution offered at trial had a number of holes.

First, it didn’t explain (at least in a very satisfying way) why clusters of taillight fragments were found in very different locations at the scene. The first pieces were found by the curb, by O’Keefe’s shoe, in the general vicinity of where it would make sense for the vehicle to have made contact with him. But subsequent clusters of pieces were found all the way up by the fire hydrant and electrical box.

That’s a reasonable distance upstream, so to speak, from the logical point of impact, as you can see here.

Now I know that the FKR crowd will claim that the reason the pieces are in different locations is because they were planted at different times. I’m not going to explain again why I think that theory makes no sense, but suffice it to say, if you’re trying to frame someone, it wouldn’t make any sense to divide up the pieces and plant them in totally different locations and at different times.

I’m not an accident reconstruction expert, so (for all I know), it’s possible that some taillight fragments could have flown that far from the point of impact with O’Keefe. It also seems possible that fragments that originally landed in the street somewhere could have been tossed toward the fire hydrant by passing snowplows.

But another possibility worth considering is that there were actually two separate events that resulted in taillight fragments falling from the SUV. The first could have been when O’Keefe threw the glass at the SUV, causing fragments to fly off toward the fire hydrant. The second could have been when the SUV backed into him, causing further damage to the already broken taillight fixture. It’s even possible O’Keefe was bending down to pick up the broken glass when he was hit, which could explain the final resting place of the glass.

The other major weakness in the prosecution’s theory of the accident was its failure to adequately explain the injuries to O’Keefe’s arm. While the medical examiner was clearly skeptical that those injuries were caused by an animal attack (and I suspect her testimony on this point will be buttressed by additional expert medical testimony in the second trial), no prosecution witness offered a clear affirmative explanation as to what caused those injuries. Trooper Paul theorized that the injuries were caused by O’Keefe’s elbow colliding with the taillight at the moment of impact, but his testimony on this point wasn’t backed up by any testing or medical testimony. And the ARCCA experts were clearly skeptical that contact with O’Keefe’s arm could have caused the taillight to shatter the way it did, at least without causing more bruising. It’s also not clear (to me at least) how contact with an intact taillight could have caused the holes in O’Keefe’s shirt (the ones the defense claims are tooth punctures).

Again, the cocktail glass theory seems to offer a potential explanation here. Suppose the taillight was in fact broken initially by O’Keefe throwing the cocktail glass at it, causing some pieces to fall near the fire hydrant area. Now suppose that, after the taillight was broken, Read backed up and hit O’Keefe with her SUV, as the prosecution alleges. Could the injuries to O’Keefe’s arm (and the holes in his shirt) have been caused by contact with the jagged edges of the already broken taillight fixture? And could that impact have broken off even more pieces of the taillight that then fell by the curb or became embedded in O’Keefe’s clothing?

I have no idea, but it seems at least plausible. And it doesn’t appear that the prosecution or the federal ARCCA experts ever considered or tested that scenario, which is a shame.