Turtleboy's Attorney Wants to Join Karen Read's Defense Team

Tuesday Briefing: An odd addition to Karen's Squad, and other filings.

Due to the amount of new filings added to the docket these past two weeks, I’m going to briefly summarize what I found to be the most significant filings from both parties.

Grab your coffee and let’s get started…

• Karen Read’s defense is seeking to add Defense Attorney Mark Bederow to their team. This filing was initially a bit bewildering since Bederow would seemingly bring very little value to a team comprised of high-powered attorneys, but after realizing that Bederow is also representing Aidan Kearney (Turtleboy) in the Witness Intimidation case, the intent is obvious. The benefit behind this is to limit the scope of discovery (like texts between attorneys, Karen, and Aidan) due to attorney-client privilege for the active and (potential future) charges regarding witness intimidation and conspiring to intimidate witnesses.

  This would be beneficial for both Aidan Kearney and potentially Karen Read, but I would expect the judge to find this as the clear conflict of interest that it is, thus denying the request. We shall see.

  *Recently an audio was leaked of Jenna Rocco (who acts as a donation manager for Karen Read) admitting that Karen Read gave Turtleboy the witnesses’ addresses prior to him doing the “rolling rally” where he harassed the witnesses outside their homes. This could be a big issue for Karen down the road. You can find that HERE.

• Supreme Judicial Court denies Karen Read’s appeal to drop charges 1 & 3.

  "In sum, we conclude that the trial judge acted within her discretion in declaring a mistrial without first inquiring about a partial verdict or offering defense counsel an additional opportunity to be heard," the court said. "Considering the length of jury deliberations, the judge's prior efforts to encourage consensus, and the increasingly emphatic tone of the jury notes indicating deadlock, it was clear the jury had reached an impasse."

• The Commonwealth is seeking reciprocal discovery from Karen’s team.

  This includes things like:

  • Names (and other basic details) of any witness and expert witness the defense intends to call.

  • Witness statements to the defense team (written, recorded, or verbal).

  • Transparency regarding monetary payments.

  • Physical documents involved with the witnesses (notes, reports, raw data, etc)

  • Transparency if the defendant plans on using a mental health defense.

• Defense is requesting the court to reconsider the reciprocal discovery order.

  The defense makes a claim that the Commonwealth can not be trusted with reciprocal discovery because they’ve “coached” witnesses in the last trial with impeachment evidence. They present two examples to try and support this accusation.

  1. Defense claims Jen McCabe “tailored” her testimony to include details that were not previously discussed. This is regarding her swinging by Trooper Lank’s house the day after John passed away, which was never mentioned prior. The defense alleges that location data provided to the CW was the reason Jen was prepared to answer this asserted impeachment evidence.

  Alan Jackson asked Jen on cross: “Did anything significant happen on January 30th in connection with this case, any meetings?”

  Jen McCabe responded: “I went to the O’Keefe’s house.”

  Alan Jackson then asks: “Other than that, anything else?”

  And that’s when Jen recalls (or what the defense alleges was coached knowledge) the event being mentioned below…

  

  2. Defense says John’s young nephew’s testimony was tailored due to the CW’s influence. The defense states that the nephew changed his statement from eating “steak tips” to “takeout” in regard to an incident where he claims Karen was being mean to him. The defense says that a video was submitted a while back of Karen and the nephew at the table, and it shows Karen being nice to him.

  (These assertions bother me. I question what part of the footage was actually presented, and whether it was the exact moment that the nephew was recalling. On top of that, I personally don’t understand why the defense would try and split hairs here over the food verbiage other than a desperate need to find an example of their allegations that the CW is “coaching” people. This makes me sad for the young nephew that he is even being suggested as lying over something so minute and meaningless years later.)

• Defense is seeking to compel discovery -

  Defense is asking for an abundant amount of information from the Commonwealth, including things like:

  • All chain of custody logs, reports, evidence logs, and other documentation regarding how the DA’s office and/or state police came into the possession of each video footage of the CPD that was provided to the defense.

  • Documents, LE notes, etc. regarding the Sandra Birchmore case because several officers who worked for Karen’s case also worked on Birchmore’s case.

  • All info (documents, reports, etc.) related to the internal investigation of Trooper Proctor.

  • All material between law enforcement and witnesses in the case, including a text conversation between witness Chris Albert and Trooper Bukkenik. Chris (a witness who has been harassed incessantly over the last few years) had texted the Trooper when two females were outside his place of business taking photos. One female hand signaled a gun motion to her head and he recorded the harassment. Yuri tells him to email the video. The defense asserts that the casual tone of their texts strongly suggests a pre-existing relationship to this case.

  • All written and digital communications between any member of the Norfolk County DA’s office and any law enforcement agent and any expert witness the CW intends to call at this trial.

• Commonwealth's Motion to Impose Sanctions Pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. Rule 48. I don’t have access to this filing, but it appears that the defense broke some rule of conduct, which is no surprise. They’ve been crossing boundaries over the last few years now, so it’s nice to see the CW fight back on it.

Other filings to mention:

• Defense seeks to exclude the state’s dog expert, James Crosby, MS PhD

  Defense is claiming that the state’s expert is not qualified enough to testify regarding the dog bite analysis, and is seeking a Daubert Hearing.

• Defense seeks access to the victim’s home driveway and his vehicle Traverse. This is clearly to do testing regarding the defense’s claims that Karen broke her taillight when bumping into John’s Traverse on the morning of 1/29/22.

(Profile Photo Source: New York Post - Gregory P. Mango)