Karen Read Trial Live: Defense Starts With Accident Reconstructionist

The live Karen Read trial is being watched closely by crime junkies, including people who think the former adjunct professor is innocent in the death of her boyfriend, John O'Keefe.

The prosecution rested its case, and Read's defense began presenting its own on May 30, 2025.

The defense started its defense with its first witness, an accident reconstructionist named Matthew DiSogra, who works for a company called DeltaV.

DiSogra told the jury that he is a “licensed professional engineer” who “practices in the field of accident reconstruction,” specializing in analysis and interpretation. Vehicle data is his specialty.

The defense is using DiSorga's testimony to question the findings of Shanon Burgess, a prosecution witness who analyzed Read's Lexus SUV data and testified that she drove in reverse at almost the same moment that O'Keefe's cellphone stopped.

That's an important piece of testimony because prosecutors say that Read struck her boyfriend, who was a Boston police officer, with her SUV and then abandoned him to die in the snow. However, the defense argues that the crash never occurred.

In an affidavit, DiSorga argued that Burgess “misstates the memory storage capacity of the chips in question, by failing to account for the differences between a megabyte, megabit, gigabyte, and gigabit.”

According to USA Today, prosecutors say the death occurred after "a night of heavy drinking with friends in 2022" outside the home of another police officer.

Read is a former finance professor, USA Today reported, and she was charged with "second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crime." Her first trial ended up in a mistrial after a hung jury. The defense argues that Read has been framed by police officers who are actually responsible for O'Keefe's death, USA Today reported.

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