Karen Read trial: Juror in 1st mistrial joins defense as suspected cop killer returns to court
A Massachusetts attorney who served as an alternate juror in the mistrial of Karen Read last year has joined her defense just days before she's scheduled to be tried for a second time on murder charges in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe.
Victoria George filed a notice of appearance for Read's defense on Wednesday, court records show.
She is a Princeton alumna who graduated from law school at Northeastern University in 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile, and she said in a recent interview that the first trial shook her faith in Massachusetts' criminal justice system.
LEAD KAREN READ INVESTIGATOR MICHAEL PROCTOR FIRED FROM STATE POLICE
"If as a lawyer I was too afraid to stand up for what I believed in, who would?" she told Vanity Fair this week.
George could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
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Read, 45, is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene of a deadly accident in connection with O'Keefe's death on Jan. 29, 2022. He was found dead in the snow outside another police officer's house hours after a group of people went there for an after-party to cap off a night out drinking.
Prosecutors accuse Read of hitting O'Keefe with her Lexus SUV after a drunken argument, then fleeing the scene. She has maintained her innocence and claimed that she's being framed and that someone else at the after-party killed him.
But jurors failed to reach an agreement after the first trial, which ended in a hung jury after days of deliberations.
The lead investigator, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, was fired last week after an internal investigation into his handling of the case, which included sending vulgar text messages about the defendant that were read in court: writing that he wished she would kill herself, joking about searching her phone for naked selfies and calling her a "wack job" and "c---."
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"Based on his own words, he had a pretty strong personal bias against the person in the defendant’s chair," George told Vanity Fair. "How do you ever trust the evidence coming from his investigation?"
Proctor has declined to comment on the case, but his wife and sister told Fox News Digital earlier this month that despite Read's insistence that someone else killed O'Keefe, she's the only person who has been indicted by a grand jury.
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David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area defense attorney and former prosecutor, said this is the first case he is aware of where a former juror joined the defense ahead of a second trial. It's also a good sign for Read's defense, he said.
"Usually retrials don’t go well – that’s why a hung jury is a win for defendants," he told Fox News Digital. "Since the last case, you have an officer involved who has been terminated for bad conduct, evidence will be suppressed that would benefit the prosecutor, and there is more media attention that makes Read look better. The prosecutor has screwed the pooch."
Read's new trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday. This time around, it will be tried by a special prosecutor, Hank Brennan, who previously defended the mobster Whitey Bulger.
O'Keefe's family has also named Read in a wrongful death lawsuit.