Hours after a 12-person Massachusetts jury found Karen Read not guilty of murdering her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe, several jurors have spoken out about how they came to their decision.
Read was accused by prosecutors of hitting O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die during a snowstorm on Jan. 29, 2022. Her first trial in 2024 ended in a hung jury, but on June 18, she was acquitted on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
The jury did, however, find her guilty on a drunk driving charge. She was sentenced to one year of probation.
Read’s defense team has long alleged O’Keefe’s death stemmed from an incident inside the Canton, Massachusetts house of fellow police officer Brian Albert. O’Keefe was found dead on Albert’s front lawn, but he says O’Keefe never came inside.
Here’s what jurors have said so far.
Karen Read trial: What happens now that she has been found not guilty of murder?
Karen Read juror says ‘there was a lot of holes in the investigation’
One of the jurors in Read’s trial, who was identified only by his first name, Jason, told TMZ he believes she is innocent.
“I think for the jurors there’s a mix of, some people think that she was definitely innocent, and the other people, there was a lot of reasonable doubt at least to where we didn’t want to convict her,” he said.
Regarding the theory that Read may have been framed in O’Keefe’s death, Jason said he doesn’t know if there was a coverup.
“I was only presented a limited scope of what happened at the night, and I can only base my opinion off of the evidence that was shown in the courtroom,” he said.
He added, “All I know is that there was a lot of holes in the investigation.”
Juror says she hopes investigation into John O’Keefe’s death reopens
Paula Prado, another juror who found Karen Read not guilty, spoke out in several media interviews after the verdict was handed down.
She told local media on June 19 that she found there were too many inconsistencies in the investigation.
“I thought Karen Read was actually maybe guilty of manslaughter in the beginning. But as the weeks passed by, I just realized there was too many holes that we couldn’t fill and there is nothing that put her on the scene, in our opinion, besides just dropping John O’Keefe off,” Prado said, per WBZ News and NBC 10 Boston.
Prado, who is a lawyer from Brazil, said in an interview on the TODAY show on June 20 that she’s “confident we did the right thing,” but feels “sorry that justice wasn’t served” for O’Keefe’s family.
“The reason why I’m coming out and talking to people is to keep the flame going and the supporters going after the DA, or whatever they have to do, to reopen the case and find who really killed John O’Keefe,” she said.
Melina Khan is a national trending reporter for USA TODAY. She can be reached at melina.khan@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Here’s what Karen Read jurors are saying after not guilty verdict
