The retrial of Karen Read, a Massachusetts woman accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, entered its second week of witness testimony on April 28.
The week will start with only a half-day of testimony, as Judge Beverly Cannone seeks to resolve an issue with two expert witnesses.
Read's retrial comes after a jury in her first trial was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against her in July 2024. Prosecutors allege that Read, 45, deliberately hit O'Keefe with her SUV in a drunken rage and left him to die in the snow in January 2022. Her defense team has said she was framed for O'Keefe's death.
The trial is expected to last up to eight weeks.
Prosecutors called Ian Whiffin, a digital intelligence expert with the company Cellebrite, who examined O'Keefe's cell phone location data the night before he was found dead. The most accurate location data starts around 12:20 a.m., when O'Keefe opened the navigation app Waze on his phone. He told jurors it is accurate within five feet.
Based on the data, Whiffin said O'Keefe's phone did not stop near the driveway of 34 Fairview Road, the house where O'Keefe was found. Whiffin said the phone appeared close to the area near the flagpole on the opposite side of the lawn, where O'Keefe's body was later found. He added that the accuracy of the location data decreased by 12:25 a.m. after Waze was closed on O'Keefe's phone.
Whiffin also analyzed the phone's battery temperature and Apple Health data on the night of January 29, 2022. He said the battery temperature dropped from around 80 degrees when it reached 34 Fairview to an eventual low of 37 degrees hours later, indicating that it never went back inside.
Health data from O'Keefe's phone showed that he climbed three flights of stairs while he appeared to be in the car. Whiffin said the "flight climbing events" appeared to be a result of the car traveling uphill.
Together, Whiffin said the information indicated to a reasonable degree of certainty that the phone remained in the area near the flagpole from around 12:24 a.m. to when O'Keefe was found.
Whiffin also testified about internet search history data on the phone of O'Keefe's friend, Jennifer McCabe.
McCabe was a central figure in Read's first trial. She is the sister-in-law of Brian Albert, one of the men the defense team in Read's first trial argued killed O'Keefe. On the morning of O'Keefe's death, McCabe allegedly looked up how long it would take someone to die in the cold. McCabe said Read asked her to make the search after they found O'Keefe lying in the snow. Read's defense team argued during the first trial that the search was made hours earlier.
Whiffin gave jurors a detailed timeline of McCabe's search history, starting at around 2:30 a.m. on January 29, 2022. He said a search was entered for "How long ti die in cikd" at about 6:23 a.m., but it did not load.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from Read's defense team asking it to overturn two charges against her.
Read's team filed the petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on April 3. They claimed that jurors in Read's first trial unanimously agreed she was not guilty on two charges - second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a crash causing injury or death - but weren't told they could return a partial verdict.
They argued that retrying Read on those charges violates the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits someone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime.
The nation's highest court posted on April 28 a list of decisions, including a list of "certiorari denied." Read's case is on that list.
Six witnesses took the stand during the first week of the trial, including including O'Keefe's mother, two of his close friends, a firefighter who was on the scene the morning he was found dead, a physician pathologist and a restaurant manager who provided surveillance footage to investigators.
Much of the testimony has revolved around Read's actions in the days and hours surrounding O'Keefe's death. Prosecutors zeroed in on a messaging exchange between Read and O'Keefe that showed they were fighting hours before O'Keefe's death. They also asked physician pathologist Garrey Faller about Read's blood alcohol levels the morning O'Keefe died.
CourtTV has been covering the case against Read and the criminal investigation since early 2022, when O'Keefe's body was found outside a Canton home.
You can watch CourtTV's live feed of the Read trial proceedings from Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts. Proceedings begin at 9 a.m. ET
Contributing: N'dea Yancey-Bragg and Michael Loria, USA TODAY