Deadly romance or police corruption?

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — A protection lawyer advised jurors in Karen Learn’s homicide trial on Tuesday that she’s the harmless sufferer of a legislation enforcement frame-job, a “tall blue wall” constructed to guard the true killers of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

The 2-month trial of Learn, who’s accused of ramming O’Keefe together with her Lexus SUV into O’Keefe and leaving him to die exterior one other officer’s home celebration in January 2022, has drawn a media storm, fanned by true crime bloggers and pink-shirted supporters of Reed who’ve rallied exterior the courthouse and waited for hours in line to witness the proceedings.

Her attorneys contend O’Keefe was dragged exterior after he was crushed up within the basement of fellow officer Brian Albert’s dwelling in Canton and bitten by Albert’s canine.

Protection lawyer Alan Jackson described a most cancers of lies that “spreads right into a conspiracy,” and he advised jurors they’re the “solely factor standing between Karen Learn and the tyranny of injustice.”

“You’ve gotten been lied to on this courtroom. Your job is to ensure you don’t ever ever look the opposite away,” he stated.

“Girls and gents, there was a cover-up on this case, plain and easy,” he added.

Learn, a former adjunct professor at Bentley School, is charged with second-degree homicide, which carries a most penalty of life in jail, together with manslaughter whereas working drunk, and leaving the scene of private damage and loss of life. The manslaughter cost carries a penalty of 5 to twenty years in jail, and the opposite cost has a most penalty of 10 years.

The protection contends investigators centered on Learn as a result of she was a “handy outsider” who saved them from having to contemplate different suspects, together with Albert and different legislation enforcement officers who have been on the celebration. Specifically, they highlighted connections between Albert and the state trooper main the investigation.

“Michael Proctor did not draw a skinny blue line, he erected a tall blue wall,” Jackson stated. “A wall that you may’t scale, a wall that Karen Learn definitely couldn’t recover from. A wall between us and them. A spot you people are usually not invited. We defend our personal.”

Jackson urged Brian Higgins, a federal agent who had exchanged flirty texts with Learn, lured O’Keefe to the home celebration, the place the 2 acquired right into a struggle resulting in punches and a fall.

“The panic units in,” he stated. “It wasn’t meant to go that far however what is completed is completed.”

Testimony started April 29 after a number of days of jury choice. Prosecutors spent a lot of the trial methodically presenting proof from the scene. The protection known as solely a handful of witnesses however used its time in cross-examining prosecution witnesses to lift questions concerning the investigation, together with what it described as conflicts of curiosity and sloppy police work. The protection was echoed by complaints from a refrain of supporters that usually camp exterior the courthouse.

The day earlier than closing arguments, the protection used the ultimate three witnesses to solid doubt on the prosecutors’ model of occasions.

Dr. Frank Sheridan, a retired forensic pathologist and former chief health worker for San Bernardino County in California, testified that O’Keefe ought to have had extra bruising if he’d been struck by the SUV. He additionally urged that scratch marks on O’Keefe’s arm may’ve come from a canine and that different accidents have been in step with an altercation.

Two witnesses from an impartial consulting agency that conducts forensic engineering additionally urged a number of the proof didn’t line up with the prosecution model of occasions. Describing their detailed reconstructions, the witnesses stated they concluded that injury to Learn’s SUV, together with a damaged taillight, didn’t match with O’Keefe’s accidents.

“You may’t deny the science and the physics,” Andrew Rentschler from the agency ARCCA stated at one level, describing an evaluation of the extent of accidents related to numerous speeds of a car like Learn’s. ARCCA was employed by the U.S. Division of Justice as a part of a federal investigation into state legislation enforcement’s dealing with of the Learn case.

However they acknowledged they have been unaware of some proof that got here later, like O’Keefe’s DNA found on items of damaged glass discovered close by and on human hair discovered on Learn’s bumper, and of Learn allegedly shouting “I hit him.”