Tonya J. Powers talks retrial of Karen Read

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The jury deliberations are continuing in the highly publicized retrial
of Karen Reid. For the latest, we go to New
York and Tanya j Powers. Tanya, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hey, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
So I understand that this case is continuing to go
on and it's very difficult to find a jury that
doesn't already know everything about the case. What are they
going to do?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah, they're in.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Jury deliberations at this point. They had started late last week.
The trial has been going on for more than a month.
And again, like you said, this is the second of
the trials. The first one ended in a mistrial last year.
Karen Reid is of course, she has been accused of

(00:41):
striking John O'Keefe with her car. John O'Keeffe was her
Boston Police officer boyfriend. They have accused her of hitting
him with her car outside a suburban of Austin house party,
leaving him to die in the snow. This was in
January of twenty twenty two. She is facing several charges,

(01:01):
the most serious of which is second degree murder, which
could you know she's convicted. She could get up to
life in prison for that. There are other uh, manslaughter,
involuntary manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death,
several other charges that could also bring substantial prison time
if she's found guilty of any of those lesser charges, uh,
instead of the first one, or in addition to the

(01:23):
first one. So that's kind of what things what's happening
with with the case the her Her lawyers say that
O'Keefe was beaten, bitten by a dog and left outside
a home in a conspiracy that was orchestrated by police
that included planting evidence against her. The you know, the

(01:43):
prosecution has of course a different take on that. They
opened their closing arguments saying that you know, Read was
callous and basically decided to leave him dying in the
snow and was fully aware that he was you know,
extremely injured, like, you know, hurt very badly. Again, we're
waiting for the jury to come to some sort of verdicts.

(02:04):
We have a little bit of daylight as to how
they may be thinking. Because of the questions they've asked
for the judge to clarify. They asked the judge, who,
by the way, the same judge oversaw the first trial
of kinder Red they've asked about the time frame that
was related to the charge of operating a motor vehicle

(02:25):
under the influence. Reading is accused of being drunk when
all of this happened, and basically they're kind of trying
to figure out a timeline of, you know, the timeframe
of when she was driving. They also asked about video
clips of interviews that she had done for a documentary
that were presented at trial. They wanted to know if
that if that constituted evidence, and the judge should yes,

(02:47):
it did. That's just a couple of the things that
that they have asked of the judge. So that's really
kind of the only insight we have at this point.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
One of the questions I did hear they also asked
the judge was what happens if they are deadlocked on
one charge? Does that they mean that they can't find
are they deadlocked on the other ones? And I believe
the judge's response on that was it depends, you know,
right now, it's too early for me to even answer
that question. So I gather what that means is he's
pushing them, not a you know, to come to some
sort of agreement guilty or not guilty. Especially I guess

(03:17):
if this is already a retry, we don't want to
do it a third time.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah. She basically said, you folks, and this was a quote.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
You if you folks have all the evidence, it's only
you who decides the facts in this case. You are
the fact finders, and basically, you know, emphasize, look, this
is your case to decide. Yes, you can ask questions,
but at the end of the day, you're the ones
going to We're you know that have said that you
can that you're going to come to a conclusion. So

(03:42):
that it seems to be that the judges kind of
gently sent them back in there and said, Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Go do your job.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Well they don't. They don't want to have to do
this a third time, I'm sure. Tanya J. Cowers live
from New York, Thank you so much for joining us
this morning on Alabama's Morning News.