Protection attorneys relaxation their case

Attorneys for Karen Learn rested their case Wednesday, practically two weeks after they started mounting a protection that sought to undermine allegations that she drunkenly backed her SUV into her boyfriend, a Boston police officer, and left him for lifeless three years in the past.

The case, which prompted intense media protection and allegations of regulation enforcement misconduct that led to the firing of the case’s lead investigator, may very well be with the jury by the top of the week.

The event comes practically one yr after Learn’s sensational first trial ended with a jury unable to achieve a unanimous verdict on fees of second-degree homicide and different crimes in reference to the Jan. 29, 2022, dying of John O’Keefe.

The protection didn’t name key figures central to the idea they specified by these preliminary proceedings — that Learn was the sufferer of a biased police investigation and a plot that sought to border her for the killing — and opted as an alternative for a sequence of consultants whose testimony sought to dismantle the prosecution’s proof.

Amongst them had been three crash reconstruction specialists and two pathologists. Additionally known as to the witness stand was a snow plow driver who provided what was maybe the protection’s most direct problem to the case that Norfolk County particular prosecutor Hank Brennan had introduced.

Blizzard-like circumstances descended on the Boston space on Jan. 29, and the driving force, Brian Loughran, testified that earlier than the snow grew heavy he made a number of passes on the residential road in Canton the place O’Keefe was discovered unresponsive.

The officer was found close to a flagpole within the entrance yard of a now-retired Boston police sergeant, Brian Albert, shortly after 6 a.m. — slightly over three hours after Loughran stated he first handed the house in his plow, nicknamed “Frankentruck” for what Loughran described as its mismatch of components.

Loughran stated he knew the Albert household — he used to ship pizzas for Brian Albert’s brother — and he testified that he might clearly see from his truck to Albert’s entrance door.

“What was on the bottom within the space of the flagpole?” requested protection legal professional David Yanetti.

“Nothing,” Loughran responded.

“Did you see a six-foot-one, 216-pound man mendacity on that garden,” Yanetti stated.

“No,” Loughran stated.

After an evening of ingesting, O’Keefe was presupposed to have gone to a gathering at Albert’s house within the early morning hours of Jan. 29. Brennan has stated he by no means made it inside. Though prosecutors introduced no direct proof of the collision that they stated left O’Keefe mortally wounded, automobile information introduced at trial confirmed Learn all of a sudden reversing her Lexus at 12:32 a.m. at 24 mph in entrance of Albert’s house.

An accident reconstruction skilled known as by Brennan testified that dozens of abrasions discovered on O’Keefe’s proper arm had been in keeping with accidents attributable to the damaged proper tail gentle on Learn’s SUV.

Learn has stated she dropped O’Keefe off outdoors Albert’s house and watched him enter. Her attorneys have stated he was doubtless crushed whereas on the gathering — maybe as a result of she had just lately flirted with, then ghosted, a federal agent who was additionally on the occasion — earlier than O’Keefe was bitten by Albert’s German shepherd, dragged outdoors and left within the snow. (Albert and the agent, Brian Higgins, have denied taking part in a task in O’Keefe’s dying.)

One of many protection witnesses, a former emergency room physician and forensic pathologist who stated she had seen a whole bunch of canine bites in her profession, testified that the handfuls of abrasions discovered on O’Keefe’s arm weren’t from a damaged tail gentle however a canine.

The protection’s remaining witness, a biomedical engineer who examined whether or not O’Keefe’s accidents had been the results of a collision, testified Wednesday that they weren’t. Experiments performed for the case utilizing crash take a look at dummies confirmed that at speeds of 24 mph, there doubtless would have been extra harm to Learn’s automotive and to O’Keefe’s arm, stated the engineer, Andrew Rentschler.

Absent from the witness stand had been three folks whose testimony performed an outsized position within the first trial: Albert, Higgins and former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor.

Proctor, who was fired after an inner investigation discovered that he despatched derogatory texts about Learn and shared confidential investigative particulars with non-law enforcement personnel, acknowledged through the first trial that he stated “unprofessional” issues about Learn. However he rejected the protection’s claims that he led a biased investigation.

The protection talked about Proctor repeatedly throughout Learn’s retrial, with protection legal professional Alan Jackson at one level asking the previous trooper’s supervisor if his conduct tainted their examination of O’Keefe’s dying.

“The investigation was accomplished with honor and integrity and the proof pointed in a single course,” Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Yuri Bukhenik responded.