Things to know about the retrial of Karen Read in the killing of her police officer boyfriend

Defense attorneys grilled a crash reconstruction expert on his methods Wednesday as Karen Read ‘s second murder trial pushed through its sixth week.

Read, 45, is accused of fatally striking her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, 46, with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow outside another officer’s home after dropping him off at a party in January 2022. Her lawyers say she was framed in a police conspiracy and that someone inside the house killed him.

A mistrial was declared last year. Read’s second trial for second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene outside Boston has so far followed similar contours to the first.

Defense questions a forensic expert’s methods

Judson Welcher, an expert with the forensics company Aperture LLC, testified early Wednesday to the prosecution that damage to Read’s SUV was “consistent with a collision” involving O’Keefe if the vehicle was moving faster than 8 mph (13 kph).

Under cross-examination, defense attorney Robert Alessi pressed Welcher about the $325,000 the state is paying his firm for its analysis and challenged his decision to cite a 1979 study in a PowerPoint presented to jurors the day before. The study says head injuries were the most common in pedestrian crashes, but Alessi asked Welcher if he was aware that more recent data indicates that lower-extremity injuries are more common.

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Welcher said he’d need to see that data.

Alessi also scrutinized Welcher’s suggestion that a cut on O’Keefe’s face could have come from the SUV’s spoiler. Welcher based his theory on O’Keefe being at street level, not on a 4-inch berm separating the street from the yard.

“I absolutely considered the berm,” Welcher said, adding that there wasn’t enough information to determine where exactly O’Keefe had been standing that night.

The back-and-forth questioning stretched throughout the day, with Alessi probing the methods Welcher used to assess cuts on O’Keefe’s arm and his theory on how O’Keefe might have fallen after being struck.

“I’m asking for proof that you considered other hypotheses,” Alessi said.

“I did a whole bunch of tests on the vehicle,” Welcher replied.

Prosecution moves to cut another expert’s resume

Separately from Wednesday’s testimony, Read’s defense team filed a motion to strike the résumé of digital forensics analyst Shannon Burgess, who testified last week and also works for Aperture.

During cross examination, Burgess acknowledged he does not hold a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and business administration, despite the claim appearing on Aperture’s website. Versions of his CV submitted by the defense state that he is “currently pursuing” the degree.

In response, prosecutors argued Wednesday that Burgess’ résumé should not have been entered into evidence, saying they weren’t given a chance to review it beforehand.

Expert says Read hit the gas in reverse

While much of the trial has centered on shattered taillight fragments from Read’s SUV, prosecutors have recently shifted their focus to digital data pulled from the vehicle and O’Keefe’s phone in an effort to map out exactly where the SUV was on the night he died.

Welcher was one of the experts testifying about time-stamp data stored on the secure digital card inside the Lexus SUV’s modules. Like an internal stopwatch, the card notes when the vehicle was powered on and off, both before and after O’Keefe’s death, and records maneuvers like a three-point turns or reversing.

Welcher said the SUV made a three-point turn, then eight minutes later it backed up more than 50 feet (15 meters) at 24 mile per hour. He said Read must have hit “three quarters of a full throttle” on the gas pedal.

Pressed by the defense on where exactly Read’s vehicle reversed — specifically whether it was into the yard where O’Keefe was found — Welcher said he didn’t know and purposefully left that detail out of his report.