Accused killer mom Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer referenced the bombshell Karen Read murder case Friday in his failed bid to avoid a mistrial — by arguing that the jurors may have been confused during deliberations.
Attorney Kevin Reddington cited the high-profile case — in which Read was charged with killing her Massachusetts police officer boyfriend in January 2022— while demanding that jurors be “polled” and asked to return for more deliberations.
“Under Karen Read versus the Commonwealth … Massachusetts rules of criminal procedure give a trial judge discretion to require a jury to return a verdict for charges on which they have agreed before declaring a mistrial,” Reddington told Judge William Sullivan.
A similar rule “also permits the judge to poll the jury when a verdict is returned and before the verdict is recorded, however, a judge is not required to accept a partial verdict before declaring a mistrial,” he said.
A lawyer for the prosecution then fired back, “I would object to that … I think we’re in a different scenario here than in the Read case.”
“In that case, they did reach a verdict on certain charges but not others,” she said.
Before making the argument, Reddington had just asked the judge to consider that the jury note was highly unusual.
“That jury foreperson wrote, very unusually, that it was ‘with a heavy heart’” that they couldn’t agree on a verdict, Reddington said.
In Karen Read’s first murder trial in 2024, jurors were confused by whether they had to agree on a verdict for all charges — including second-degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crash, Read’s lawyer, Peter Elikann, told The Post Friday.
“[Reddington] didn’t want an issue where the jury didn’t know it wasn’t all or nothing,” Elikann said.
To prevent that, Reddington said he wanted each juror polled about whether they are truly in a deadlock.
“He wants each one of them individually questioned on each individual charge,” Elikann said.
Some jurors in Read’s first trial thought Judge Beverly Cannone was unclear about the definition of a unanimous verdict, Elikann said.
“Jurors felt Judge Cannone not only prematurely declared a mistrial, they felt she should have inquired whether they were unable to agree on all the charges — or whether they had come to agreement on some of the charges but not others,” Elikann said.
Boston criminal defense lawyer Brad Bailey said Reddington made the comparison due to the unusual jury note.
“You need to be careful in how notes are construed, and you need to make sure you’re not missing something before you do something as important in declaring a mistrial,” Bailey said Friday.
“[Reddington is] referencing a case where there was real confusion,” he said. “You need to make sure that the note is unambiguous before you declare a mistrial.”
Read was ultimately acquitted in a second trial of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of a crash, but convicted of operating under the influence in June 2025.
She was accused of mowing O’Keefe down with her SUV after dropping him off at his cop pal’s house following a night of heavy drinking.
Prosecutors said Read then drove off, leaving O’Keefe to die in a snowbank as a winter storm was coming in overnight.
The Clancy case was ultimately declared a mistrial Friday following more than six days of deliberations due to one holdout juror who wanted to convict her.
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