Karen Read’s dog bite expert allowed to testify at retrial, judge rules

Judge Beverly Cannone has given the green light for Karen Read’s dog bite expert to testify at her upcoming retrial.

Prosecutors sought to keep Dr. Marie Russell off the stand, arguing the retired emergency room physician and forensic pathologist wasn’t qualified to offer her opinion that Read’s boyfriend, John O’Keefe, was wounded in a dog attack.

Russell recently spent two full days fielding questions about her credentials and methodology, and Cannone acknowledged in her ruling Monday that it was a “close question” of whether Russell met the legal standards for an expert witness. 

However, the judge ultimately concluded, “the recognition of dog bite wounds is not within the common knowledge of a layperson and requires expert testimony, and Dr. Russell is a qualified expert as to these topics.”  

Prosecutors say Read, 44, drunkenly and intentionally backed her SUV into O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, after a night of bar-hopping with friends in January 2022. She’s accused of leaving O’Keefe to die outside the home of Brian Albert, another Boston officer who was hosting an afterparty. 

But Read’s lawyers allege she was framed in a coverup, theorizing that O’Keefe was beaten as he walked into the party, attacked by Albert’s dog, and ultimately dumped outside in the snow. Read’s first trial ended with a hung jury in July of 2024, and she’s due to stand trial again April 1 of this year.

Russell has maintained that wounds on O’Keefe’s arm were “inflicted by a dog attack,” the same opinion she offered during Read’s first trial. 

“I considered various possibilities of a car accident — a pedestrian accident, I should say,” she said during a hearing last week. “And I went through many scenarios in my head, and no car accident scenario could create that configuration of wounds that’s on the arm.”

In her ruling, Cannone acknowledged that prosecutors had demonstrated Russell’s expertise primarily concerns the treatment of dog bites, not their identification, and that Russell “failed to consider all available information” in her evaluation. Russell’s opinion is also inconsistent with test results from the University of California Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory Forensic Unit, which found no signs of canine DNA on swabs taken from O’Keefe’s shirt, the judge noted. 

“However, the Court concludes that these issues go to the weight of Dr. Russell’s testimony, not its admissibility, and can be addressed during cross-examination at trial,” Cannone wrote. 

Separately, prosecutors are seeking to exclude testimony from defense digital expert Richard Green, who was adamant that witness Jennifer McCabe Googled “hos long to die in cold” hours before O’Keefe was found in the snow. Last week, prosecutors said they also plan to ask Cannone to block testimony from Daniel Wolfe and Andrew Rentschler, two crash reconstructionists who testified for the defense in Read’s first trial. 

Read’s case returns to court Jan. 31.

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.