“And Dr. Russell is a qualified expert as to these topics,” Cannone wrote. “She is a board-certified emergency medical doctor with over 30 years of experience, is trained in forensic pathology, and has conducted over 500 autopsies. With respect to dog bites specifically, Dr. Russell has treated hundreds of wounds resulting from dog attacks during her time as an emergency room doctor and co-authored peer-reviewed articles on the treatment of law enforcement canine bites in the emergency room.”
Read, 44, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of personal injury and death. Prosecutors allege that she drunkenly backed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, early on Jan. 29, 2022, after dropping him off outside a Canton home following a night of drinking.
Her lawyers say she was framed and that O’Keefe entered the home, owned at the time by a fellow Boston police officer, where he was fatally beaten in the basement and possibly attacked by the family German Shepherd before his body was planted on the front lawn. Her first trial ended in July with a hung jury, and a retrial is scheduled to begin in April. Read remains free on bail.
Russell testified during the first trial that the abrasions on O’Keefe’s arm appeared to come from dog bites, but prosecutors said her testimony “cannot be reliably applied to the facts” and questioned her aggressively during a recent hearing that spanned multiple days.
In her ruling, Cannone said that while prosecutors scored points during the hearing, it was not enough to keep Russell off the stand.
“On cross-examination, the Commonwealth demonstrated, among other things, that Dr. Russell’s expertise primarily concerns the treatment, not the identification, of dog bites,” Cannone wrote, adding that prosecutors showed “that her evaluation of the abrasions failed to consider all available information; that she has not compared the abrasions with the dentition of the German Shepherd in question; and that her opinion is inconsistent with findings that there was no canine DNA in the area of the victim’s clothing near the abrasions.”
Ultimately, a jury will decide whether Russell’s opinion is credible, Cannone wrote.
The issues raised by prosecutors “go to the weight of Dr. Russell’s testimony, not its admissibility, and can be addressed during cross-examination at trial,” she wrote.
Separately, the state Supreme Judicial Court is weighing a defense request to drop the murder and leaving the scene charges, on the grounds that multiple jurors indicated, either directly or through intermediaries, that the jury unanimously agreed to acquit of those counts and remained divided only on manslaughter.
It’s not clear when the SJC will rule.
Read also faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed by O’Keefe’s family in Plymouth Superior Court.
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].
Source link https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/13/metro/judge-karen-read-case-allows-dog-bite-expert-testify-retrial-calling-it-close-question/
