The prosecutor who led the case against Karen Read released a statement on Monday expressing his disapproval of her acquittal on Wednesday, June 18. Read, a woman from Massachusetts, was accused of killing her police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, with her car while drunk and leaving him to die in the cold. After the first trial resulted in a hung jury, Read was found not guilty of manslaughter and was only convicted of one count of drunk driving. In his Monday statement, the special prosecutor, Hank Brennan, condemned the retrial as a threat to “the integrity of our judicial system” and alleged witness abuse. Brennan wrote that, after the district attorney of Norfolk County appointed him to the case, he independently reviewed the case, determining that “the evidence led to one person, and only one person” as the killer, the accused Karen Read. During the extensively reported trial, Read’s defense claimed that the accused was framed by unknown actors who may have conspired with the police. Upon her release, Read was greeted by her many supporters, many of whom agreed that she had been victimized by police corruption. Brennan wrote that he saw the retrial as a “campaign of intimidation and abuse that has been waged, funded, and promoted in public and on social media,” which he calls “the antithesis of justice.”
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