An expert for Karen Read's defense team can testify at Read's retrial later this year, the judge overseeing the case ruled Monday, handing a loss to the prosecution.
The state had sought to keep Dr. Marie Russell, a defense dog bite expert who testified at Read's first trial, from testifying in the upcoming case. She was interviewed at a pair of recent hearings, where the Norfolk County District Attorney's office referred to what they called inconsistencies in her testimony.
Read is accused of hitting her Boston police officer boyfriend John O'Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow in Canton, Massachusetts, outside the home of Brian Albert — another Boston police officer — in January 2022.
She faces charges of second-degree murder, knowingly leaving the scene of an accident and involuntary manslaughter. She's pleaded not guilty, and the first trial ended in a hung jury.
Read's team claims she was framed, the victim of a police conspiracy. Russell's testimony about injuries to O'Keefe's arm is part of their contention that a dog was involved in his death.
"Here, the recognition of dog bite wounds is not within the common knowledge of a layperson and requires expert testimony, and Dr. Russell is a qualified expert as to these topics," Judge Beverly Cannone said in her ruling Monday.
In it, Cannone recognized that prosecutors were able to demonstrate during their cross-examination of Russell at the recent hearings that her "expertise primarily concerns the treatment, not the identification, of dog bites; that her evaluation of the abrasions failed to consider all available information; that she has not compared the abrasions with the dentition [tooth arrangement] of the German Shepherd in question; and that her opinion is inconsistent with findings that there was no canine DNA in the area of the victim's clothing near the abrasions."
But she said that those issues can be addressed by prosecutors when she takes the stand at the trial, citing Massachusetts court precedent that says judges don't "determine whether to credit the expert's ultimate opinion."
The prosecution has filed several recent motions aimed at limiting the scope of the defense's argument and expanding their own, including seeking to prevent Read's lawyers from calling in the retrial the expert who says the infamous "hos long to die in cold" Google search, another key component in their claim of a coverup, was made before O'Keefe's body was found.