The destiny of Karen Learn was handed Tuesday to jurors who should resolve whether or not the Massachusetts lady ended a rocky romance by angrily hanging her boyfriend along with her SUV and leaving him mortally injured within the snow, or the sufferer of police corruption, framed to cowl up a combat on the dwelling of a fellow Boston officer.
Jurors set to work after a two-month homicide trial within the loss of life of Boston police officer John O’Keefe in January 2022. The case has drawn outsized consideration, fanned by true crime bloggers and Learn’s pink-shirted supporters.
Protection lawyer Alan Jackson described a most cancers of lies that “spreads right into a conspiracy,” and informed jurors they’re the “solely factor standing between Karen Learn and the tyranny of injustice.”
“You may have been lied to on this courtroom. Your job is to ensure you don’t ever ever look the opposite away,” he mentioned Tuesday.
However Assistant District Legal professional Adam Lally informed jurors “there isn’t a conspiracy.” He started his closing argument with the phrases 4 witnesses reported listening to Learn say after O’Keefe was found on the snowy garden: “The defendant repeatedly mentioned ’I hit him. I hit him. Oh my God. I hit him.”
“These have been the phrases that got here from the defendant’s mouth,” Lally mentioned.
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 a scene of non-public 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.
Her attorneys contend O’Keefe was dragged outdoors after he was overwhelmed up within the basement and bitten by a canine at Boston officer Brian Albert’s dwelling in Canton.
“Women and gents, there was a cover-up on this case, plain and easy,” Jackson mentioned.
Lally, nonetheless, confirmed the jurors what Learn herself mentioned that night time, in a voice message she left for O’Keefe moments after knowledge from her automotive recorded her driving in reverse at roughly 24 mph after which leaving the scene. In it, he mentioned, she was “seething in rage as she’s screaming, ‘John, I [expletive] hate you!’”
The protection mentioned witnesses who claimed to have heard her say she hit O’Keefe had modified their story or couldn’t have heard the feedback because of the chaotic scene. Jackson mentioned 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 on the home celebration. Particularly, they highlighted connections between Albert and the state trooper who led the investigation.
“Michael Proctor didn’t draw a skinny blue line, he erected a tall blue wall,” Jackson mentioned. “A wall which you can’t scale, a wall that Karen Learn definitely couldn’t recover from. A wall between us and them. A spot you folks should not invited. We defend our personal.”
Jackson steered Brian Higgins, a federal agent who had exchanged flirty texts with Learn, lured O’Keefe to the home celebration, the place the 2 bought right into a combat resulting in punches and a fall.
“The panic units in,” he mentioned. “It wasn’t meant to go that far however what is finished is finished.”
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 boost questions in regards to 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 always camp outdoors the courthouse.