A juror in the Karen Read trial says she went in leaning toward a guilty verdict but changed her mind once she poured through the evidence, joining her 11 fellow panelists in acquitting the 45-year-old of murder and manslaughter charges.
Janet Jimenez, juror No. 12, knew nothing about the high-profile case in which Read was accused of hitting her Boston cop boyfriend John O’Keefe, 46, with her car and leaving him to die in a snowbank outside a house party in January 2022.
“I felt like if they didn’t pick me, they’d be fools because I didn’t know anything about this case,” Jimenez told WCVB-TV in an interview Friday.
But suddenly, the personal trainer from Medfield, Massachusetts, had a front-row seat to the monthslong murder trial, which ended Wednesday when the jury found Read, a financial analyst, not guilty of second-degree murder, leaving the scene of an accident causing death and manslaughter while driving under the influence.
“I think I had the best view in the house,” Jimenez told the outlet. “She was right there. The defense was right there.”
After a mistrial last year, Read was sentenced to only one year of probation for drunk driving.
Jimenez joined at least two fellow jurors in speaking out after their decision.
“I went in with a very open mind but definitely leaning towards she was guilty,” Jimenez said.
But Jimenez said there were holes in the investigation, and after pouring through more than 200 pieces of evidence, she didn’t find one item she was looking for — which she didn’t specify — leaving her doubtful.
“I’m not there to say the defense’s story was right or wrong,” she explained. “There were things that we saw, things that we heard … it could have fit that scenario. So again, that’s the whole doubt thing.”
The defense claimed that Read, a former adjunct professor, was the victim of an elaborate police cover-up and that O’Keefe was beaten up at the party and dragged into the snow to die.
Jimenez said she did not necessarily believe the defense’s claim that a friend of Read’s knew O’Keefe was left out in the cold, or accusations of a police cover up, but that she is is “very comfortable” with how she came to her decision.
“I guess it’ll be part of my story,” she said.
On Thursday, Paula Prado, another juror, said in an interview that while she believes there was a chance Read “backed up fast enough to touch” O’Keefe, she didn’t believe his fatal head injuries were caused by getting hit with a car.
“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 told WBZ.
“He definitely went inside and something happened inside the house,” she added.
Another juror, identified only as Jason, told TMZ that reasonable doubt never played a part in his decision and that he believed Read’s SUV never collided with O’Keefe.
Some key witnesses in the trial, however, released a joint statement Wednesday calling the ruling a “devastating miscarriage of justice.”
Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey only said, “The jury has spoken.”
With Post wires
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