Posted at 11:34 AM, March 7, 2025
ATLANTA, Ga. (Court TV)—A juror from Karen Read‘s first murder trial is revealing what happened behind the scenes, leading to a mistrial in July 2024.
Karen Read appears in court during a pretrial hearing on Feb. 25, 2025. (Court TV)
Read stood trial on several charges in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, who was found dead in the snow after a night out drinking. Read faced charges of second-degree murder, leaving the scene of personal injury and death, and manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence. A mistrial was declared on July 1 after the jury submitted two separate notes to Judge Beverly Cannone indicating they were hopelessly deadlocked.
In the months following the trial, several jurors approached both Read’s defense and the prosecution to say that the panel had actually unanimously acquitted Read on the charges of murder and leaving the scene of an accident and had only been deadlocked on the charge of manslaughter.
“Unfortunately, at that time, we did not fill out any of the paperwork there, nor sign it,” Ronnie Estanislao told Court TV’s Vinnie Politan. “We were under the understanding that each charge could not be treated separately, and so we continued to deliberate despite the fact that we had agreed on two of the counts as not guilty.”
Estanislao, a Massachusetts paramedic, served on the panel that heard Read’s first trial for ten weeks. “Most of us felt that she was operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and that played into it; however, to some individuals there was reasonable doubt on the mechanism to which Mr. O’Keefe actually succumbed and died.”
READ MORE | Allegations of jury tampering, hidden evidence at tense Karen Read hearing
Estanislao said that his knowledge of working as a paramedic also called into question some of the testimony from first responders, who said they heard Read saying, “I hit him,” in reference to O’Keefe. “I found it interesting that was what everybody kind of remembered, when usually in the heat of the moment…you focus on taking care of the patient and not what the others are saying.”
Ronnie Estanislao, who served as a juror in Karen Read’s first trial, joined Vinnie Politan to discuss the trial. (Court TV)
The panel debated for hours about O’Keefe’s injuries and whether they were consistent with being hit by a car, according to Estanislao. “I believe it may be something else,” he said when asked if he believed O’Keefe was killed by a vehicle.
The defense failed to convince the jurors that Read was the victim of a wide-ranging cover-up at the hands of Trooper Michael Proctor. “We didn’t feel like there was any tampering per se,” Estanislao said, “because of the fact that it didn’t seem like there was the appropriate timeline to actually do some tampering and then get it to the lawn or the crime scene within the correct time frame.”
Ultimately, Estanislao said he blames himself and the rest of the jury for failing to give closure to the case. He believes that had the jurors asked whether they should have been considering all the charges independently, the mistrial could have been avoided. “Shame on us for not asking the question, and shame on the system for not very clearly indicating what can be done and what can’t be done.”
Karen Read’s retrial is scheduled to begin on April 1.
