defense seeks DA Morrissey’s texts, emails

Morrissey’s spokesman declined to comment because the case is pending and said any “response by the office will be given in court.”

Reading44, of Mansfield, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence and leaving the scene of bodily injury resulting in death. Prosecutors allege she backed up her SUV while intoxicated Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe early on Jan. 29, 2022, after dropping it off outside a Canton residence after a night of bar-hopping. Her lawyers says it was framed and that O’Keefe entered the home, owned at the time by a fellow Boston police officer, where he was beaten to death in the basement before his body was planted on the front lawn.

Her sonThe first trial ended in a hung jury in July, and her retrial is currently scheduled for January. She remains free on bail.

The email from Morrissey that Read’s lawyers cited Friday refers to Aidan Kearneya blogger known as “Turtleboy” who supported his claims of innocence.

Kearney has pleaded not guilty to charges of witness tampering in the Read case, and one of his attorneys, Mark A. Bederow, disclosed Morrissey’s email in a filing last month.

On Sept. 28, 2023, Read witness Chris Albert requested a restraining order against Kearney during a public hearing in Stoughton District Court, where a judge denied the request, Bederow wrote. Kearney wrote about the hearing later in the day on his blog, prompting another Read witness, Jennifer McCabe, to text an unnamed person that “someone at the court immediately passed it on” to Kearney, a wrote Bederow.

McCabe’s message was passed on to Morrissey, who included it in an email he sent to Magistrates’ Court administrators from a personal iCloud account, expressing “serious concerns” about the alleged leak, even though the hearing was a public proceeding, Bederow wrote.

Morrissey’s email, which Bederow included in the filing, also named a Stoughton District Court employee, Michelle Littlefield, as the “primary individual posing as a potential leak.”

Morrissey wrote that his office was informed by multiple parties that shortly after the restraining order hearing, Kearney was “provided the entire affidavit. There is no way he would have been privy to the proceedings without an insider working in the courthouse.”

A Tribunal spokesman said Littlefield was placed on paid leave in October 2023 and terminated the following month.

“We are extremely concerned that improperly released, unsolicited court material to a third party, which continues to cause harm and prejudice to witnesses (sic) in an ongoing homicide prosecution, must be a violation of court policies or a potential violation of the law,” Morrisey wrote to court officials.

In Friday’s motion, Read’s attorneys said Morrissey’s email was inappropriate.

“DA Morrissey’s ex parte communication with the Tribunal judges, including the very judge who presided over Ms Read’s case while it was pending in the District Court and his request for ‘evidence and assurance(s)’ that they were taken ” actions” by the Stoughton District Court, is extremely troubling and raises questions about the integrity of this prosecution,” they wrote.

The motion said Morrissey, in his email, said Albert and “others” informed him that Kearney had received the restraining order affidavit, “indicating that a number of witnesses in this matter had contacted team members of criminal prosecution”.

Read’s lawyers said that while “the defendant does not have to make such a request to seek disclosure, Ms Read is asking that any ‘material evidence, exculpation’ contained in DA Morrissey’s private communications about her case – which it is a matter of public interest – to be disclosed. .”

Separatedthe state’s highest court weighs a claim from Read’s lawyers to drop the murder and drop the charges against her at the scene on the grounds that several jurors told themeither directly or through intermediaries, that the jury unanimously agreed to acquit her of these two counts.

Plus, Read faces a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the O’Keefe family to Plymouth Superior Court.

This report used material from previous Globe stories.

Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].