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Karen Learn’s protection crew of heavy-hitting attorneys is able to start tearing down the prosecution’s homicide case towards her after the state rested its case this week.
Learn is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, outdoors an acquaintance’s home celebration simply after midnight on Jan. 29, 2022.
The prosecution alleges that Learn struck O’Keefe along with her 2021 Lexus SUV in a drunken ragme after a night of preventing earlier than leaving him to freeze to dying within the entrance yard of 34 Fairview Street.
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Karen Learn speaks along with her protection legal professional, Alan Jackson, throughout her retrial in Norfolk Superior Court docket, Thursday, Could 29, 2025, in Dedham, Mass. (AP Picture/Mark Stockwell, Pool)
Particular prosecutor Hank Brennan rested the state’s case on Thursday, practically two months after jury choice started. Brennan’s ultimate witness, Aperture crash reconstructionist Dr. Judson Welcher spent three days on the stand offering testimony on his findings supporting the state’s allegations that Learn fatally struck O’Keefe along with her car.
He pointed to his personal experimentation utilizing a Lexus taillight and moist paint as an instance how O’Keefe may have sustained the accidents to his arm, and he stated {that a} “glancing” blow from the car may clarify why the sufferer did not have typical car-strike accidents.
“In case you influence the hand with a 1-inch slender metallic bar, that is quite a bit completely different than you probably have a broad, plastic taillight or rear physique panel,” Welcher stated. “So when you may have distributed hundreds, you possibly can take far more.”
Learn’s protection crew is ready to start presenting their case on Friday as attorneys Alan Jackson, David Yannetti and Robert Alessi look to sow doubt across the state’s allegations, with Yannetti considered because the strongest member of Learn’s crew by consultants.
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Karen Learn seems in Norfolk County Superior Court docket for a pretrial listening to. She is charged with the homicide of her boyfriend, John O’Keefe. (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe through Getty Photographs)
Photographs of an accident reconstruction check by Dr. Judson Welcher are proven through the Karen Learn retrial at Norfolk Superior Court docket on Could 28, 2025. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger through AP, Pool)
“David Yannetti is one of the best trial lawyer within the case,” retired Massachusetts Superior Court docket Choose and Boston Faculty legislation professor Jack Lu informed Fox Information Digital, “with the doable exception of Brennan.”
Yannetti is a seasoned prison protection legal professional and has been with Learn since earlier than her first trial.
“He has the vary that Mr. Brennan may lack,” Lu stated. “Brennan, with all his spectacular expertise, largely has one pace, effectively, two speeds. Yannetti, an award-winning advocate since legislation faculty, has seen all of it and fights for a place from which the protection can probably salvage issues.”
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Protection legal professional David Yannetti listens to testimony through the trial of Karen Learn in Norfolk Superior Court docket, Could 16, 2025. (Mark Stockwell/The Solar Chronicle, AP Pool)
The protection will look to dismantle the state’s case, which frequently pointed to Learn’s interviews with numerous information retailers, addressing the general public in her personal phrases.
“So I believed, ‘May I’ve run him over?’” Learn stated in a 2024 interview with Investigation Discovery. “Did he attempt to get me as I used to be leaving and I didn’t realize it?”
Learn’s authorized crew insists her car by no means got here involved with O’Keefe whereas pointing to the likelihood that one thing or another person was chargeable for the police officer’s dying.
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“After which once I employed David Yannetti, I requested him these questions,” Learn stated in the identical clip. “The night time of Jan. 29, David, what if I ran his foot over? Or what if I clipped him within the knee and he handed out or went to look after himself and threw up or handed out? And David stated, ‘Yeah, then you may have some component of culpability.'”
Lu believes the first objective for the protection crew must be to humanize Learn in a means that paints her in a positive gentle to the jurors whereas taking intention at an alleged cover-up scheme by the Massachusetts Police Division.
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“The prosecutor has made her right into a self-absorbed caricature,” Lu informed Fox Information Digital, including, “They have to get into the hatred of her by (former investigator) Michael Proctor.”
Proctor is on the witness record, nevertheless it stays unclear whether or not the protection will put him on the stand. Prosecutors didn’t name him this time round after his testimony within the first trial noticed jurors shaking their heads as they heard his inappropriate texts about Learn in courtroom. The case resulted in a mistrial, and he misplaced his job days earlier than the second trial kicked off.
Learn has pleaded not responsible. If convicted, she faces the potential of life in jail for probably the most severe cost of second-degree homicide.
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“Proper now Ms. Learn’s authorized case is badly wounded,” Lu stated. “Mr. Yannetti has the power to allure the jury, combat the choose as wanted, current the protection witnesses – a few of whom are hostile – and in closing, encourage the jury.”
