After a trial, a retrial, two juries, two lead prosecutors, approximately four months of evidence presented in total, well over 100 witnesses called to the stand, a lead investigator losing his career with the Massachusetts State Police, and an untold number of manhours spent covering, reporting on, writing about, watching, reading up on, discussing and theorizing over these two trials –  an amount that they can’t be calculated with anything but one of those numbers with a double exponent, like how many particles there are in the known universe – we finally have a verdict.

By way of full disclosure, I’m traveling right now and probably can’t give this verdict the treatment it deserves until later. But then again, I’m just a former Court Officer. In the game of criminal trials, we badge monkeys were just the guys on the sidelines holding the 1st down markers. (In fact, that might be giving us too much credit.) These two trials will be poured over by attorneys, legal scholars and judges for decades to come. Probably taught in law schools. Not to mention the True Crime shows and the docuseries that will no doubt arise out of this. And the interviews with the jurors to come will be picked apart and analyzed ad nauseum starting in the next few days. That is something we can be sure of.

The Commonwealth vs Karen Read Parts I & II have been, like a lot of things in America in the 2020s, divisive. Most people – Massholes especially –  made up their minds a long time ago. The battle lines have been drawn since long before jury selection began in the spring of 2024. And not much has transpired since to make many people to move off their very entrenched opinions. So it would be naive to think this verdict will be any different. The Identity-Protective Cognition is strong in this one.

So let me just repeat what I’ve been saying all along. In the literally hundreds of trials I worked in the MA Trial Court, the one common factor was that the juries all tried hard to get it right. They might not have wanted to be there. They didn’t have a dog in the fight, or else they wouldn’t have gotten empaneled. But they had respect for the process and did the best job they could do to reach a verdict given the often wildly incomplete information they were given. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. I can assure you.

So respect their decision, regardless of your own theory of the case. They were asked to determine whether or not the Commonwealth proved beyond a reasonable doubt – the highest standard in the legal system – Karen Read murdered John O’Keefe by slamming her SUV into him on January 29th, 2022. And now we have our answer.

Let justice be done though the heavens fall. Now let’s hope the one thing that everyone on either side of this should have wanted from the very beginning. May Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe Rest in Peace. At long last, Requiescat in Pace to one of Boston’s Finest.