It will be a special day in the Karen Read trial today, as the jury will not be present when court begins at 9:30 a.m.
Instead, lawyers will be conducting voir dire of upcoming witnesses. It’s a process, according to Cornell Law School’s Wex Law Dictionary, in which lawyers perform an initial questioning of “witnesses (especially experts) to determine their competence to testify.”
There have been a few instances throughout the trial, which began April 29, when jurors were dismissed ahead of the end of the day so attorneys could question a witness on a particular or unexpected line of questioning introduced in direct examination. But there hasn’t been a full court day dedicated to it.
Attorneys did not announce who would be questioned today.
Read, 44, of Mansfield, faces charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing the death of her boyfriend John O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston Police officer when he died at age 46.
Yesterday recap
Text messages between Read and O’Keefe revealed a relationship on the rocks just hours before he was found nearly frozen in a Canton yard.
“Sick of always arguing and fighting. It’s been weekly for several months now. So yeh I’m not as quick to jump back into being lovie dovie as you apparently,” O’Keefe texted Read at 2:32 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2022, in the middle of a heated back-and-forth over an argument they had that morning.
Read had her own theories over the state of their relationship: “Tell me if you are interested in someone else. Can’t think of any other reason you’ve been like this,” she texted at 2:25 p.m. that day.
“Nope,” O’Keefe responded. “Things haven’t been great between us for a while. Ever consider that?”
The text exchanges were read aloud in court Monday by Massachusetts State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino and came at the end of a day that was otherwise long on testimony examining digital evidence. That testimony included an expert who concluded that a woman central to the defense’s theory that Read was framed made a key Google search when she said she did.
