Five Takeaways from Juror Interviews So Far

Consensus that it was not even a close case

We have now heard from four deliberating jurors and one alternate. The separate media interviews with them are relatively short and hence do not capture the full range of jury deliberations over two full days and parts of two other days. And those who have sat for interviews are a self-selected group and may not represent the views of the eight other deliberating jurors who so far have been silent.

But here are five takeaways from the interviews we have so far

First, no juror appears to have considered the case close. They seem to have agreed that the prosecution’s case fell woefully short of proving Read guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, with two jurors suggesting Read is actually innocent. They did think prosecutor Hank Brennan did a “good job,” but the evidence just was not there.

Second, no juror reports being given pause by the broken pieces of taillight lens found on the lawn at 34 Fairview Rd that were a match for missing pieces from Read’s SUV. This was perhaps the Commonwealth’s strongest physical evidence that a collision occurred, and the jurors interviewed so far did not buy it. They have not fully explained why, but the defense pointed to the delay in finding pieces, and chain of custody problems once pieces were found.

Third, only one juror has mentioned the time-line digital evidence, retrieved from Read’s SUV, that arguably showed her backing her car up at considerable speed at precisely the time O’Keefe’s cellphone stopped recording movement. Much of this evidence was new to the second trial and the prosecution placed great emphasis on it. But the one juror who mentioned it, Paula Prado, dismissed it entirely and noted how the time sequence kept shifting. She also mentioned how the defense caught the prosecution’s digital expert, Shanon Burgess, lying about possessing a Bachelor of Science degree.

Fourth, although the jurors mentioned the vulgar texts sent by fired state Trooper Michael Proctor about Karen Read, they did not seem to place undue emphasis on them and did not leap to the conclusion that there was a police conspiracy to frame Read. They spoke of the “holes” in the investigation that created room for reasonable doubt. Juror #1, the foreperson, suggested that the incomplete investigation was a matter of the police protecting their own – namely then Boston police officer Brian Albert, owner of 34 Fairview Rd.

Fifth, in the battle of experts, the interviewed jurors clearly found the defense’s medical and crash reconstruction witnesses more credible than the prosecution’s experts. One juror, echoing the defense closing argument, faulted the “blue paint transfer onto arm” experiment performed by Dr. Judson Welcher to show that an arm hit by a backwards moving SUV could indeed make the kind of marks seen in O’Keefe’s arm as just plain “silly.”

Jeffrey Abramson, Professor of Government and Law Emeritus, Univ. of Texas at Austin, and author of We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (Harvard Univ. Press).

Please consider subscribing to my publication on other jury trials: jurynewsletter.substack.com