Jurors in the trial of Karen Read unanimously concluded she was not guilty of murder or of leaving the scene of a deadly accident, and were deadlocked on only the remaining manslaughter charge before the judge abruptly declared a mistrial, her defense team said Monday.
The disclosure was made in a defense motion Monday in which they argued that retrying Read on those two counts “would violate" the double jeopardy protections in the U.S. and Massachusetts constitutions. If the court needs additional information, the defense said, it should approve a “post-verdict inquiry” in which they are allowed to “seek additional proof from the jurors” regarding their having “unanimously acquitted the defendant of two of the three charges against her.”
So why wasn't the jury polled by Judge Beverly Cannone before she declared a mistrial?
We asked legal expert Michael Coyne, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, that exact question during Monday night's episode of "Canton Confidential."
"Generally, they don't want, the court doesn't want the jury polled," he said. "They don't want to invade the jury's space, in essence to ask them to reject their conscious decision individually."
"She could have asked them generally, 'Do you all agree that you can't reach a verdict on count one, do you all agree you can't reach a unanimous verdict on count two,'" Coyne added. "But you would've wanted to do it generally like that to the entire veneer, and not just individually ask each juror what their vote was, because that can be an intimidating tactic if they had chosen that route, and it's not just disfavored, it's not supposed to be done under the law."
Following Monday's defense filing, Cannone also ordered that the names of the jurors in the case not be released. In making her ruling, she said there “is a risk of immediate and irreparable injury should the list be made available to the public at this time.”
She did not specify the potential risk but said that people associated with the case had been charged with intimidation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
