Karen Read 'considering all options' in possible civil suit, attorneys says

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Aug 28, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

BOSTON — Karen Read attorney Alan Jackson said that he and his client are “considering all options” when it comes to a civil suit regarding her prosecution for murder, for which she was acquitted earlier this year.

“I’ll say this — I’m back here for a reason, it’s not just a pleasure tour. We’ve met with the legal team back here dealing with the civil issue. There’s obviously a lot to unpack where that’s concerned,” attorney Alan Jackson said on the "Howie Carr Show" Thursday afternoon.

“So had and will continue to have significant meetings about that, what Karen’s next options — what her options are in general, but what her next moves might be. And we’re considering all options,” he continued.

Jackson declined to go into specifics about what the civil action would entail, but assured that “Nothing’s off the table and no one’s off the table.”

Jackson said that to pay for her legal fight, Read had to lose her career, her car — which has still not been returned to her, he said — her house and her own freedom for four years as the court proceedings played out.

“How much is that worth?,” Jackson said. “I don’t think there’s any amount of money — there’s not an amount of money I can think of — that would reasonably compensate her.”

“I can guarantee you, that civil case will be righteously defended — righteously defended — and that means getting every single scrap of information that we’re entitled to and that we did not get during the criminal case.”

In her own words

Read, who appeared briefly during the program, said that her post-trial life is “Not quite what I expected.”

“It’s a little like a dimmer where the lights are coming on a little brighter each week,” Read said. “There’s moments I have every day, these little epiphanies of, ‘Wow, this is the first time I’ve done, fill in the blank, in the last four years that I was living with this nightmare.’”

She also responded to the news Wednesday that Massachusetts native and actress Elizabeth Banks, famous for roles including the Hunger Games series, is set to play Read in an upcoming Amazon Prime series.

She said she found out about it along with everyone else and that she had not been contacted about the project nor given her blessing. She said her representatives in Los Angeles, meaning Jackson, who is based there, “are not hard to find.”

Read said she’s looking forward to telling her own story in a book of her own.

The murder case

Jackson was a prominent member of Read’s legal defense team in both of her trials for the murder of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

The first trial in the summer of 2024 ended with a hung jury and Judge Beverly J. Cannone declared a mistrial.

But the defense said that post-trial disclosures by members of the jury indicate that not one of them wanted to acquit for murder but were instead hung on a lesser charge under manslaughter. This contention had them fight for case dismissal on double jeopardy protection grounds, which failed at the local, state, federal and federal appellate court levels. Jackson said Thursday he still believes should have been granted.

Then came trial two which began in April and ended in June with Read’s acquittal on all charges save for the least they could consider: operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, for which Read received a year of probation.

Prosecutors say that the two-year relationship between Read and O’Keefe had become strained with jealousy and significant fighting, heightened by frequent alcohol use.

During the trials, prosecutors presented a case that in the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022, Read and O’Keefe got into an alcohol-fueled fight on their way to an after-party at a home in Canton and that Read backed her SUV up at great speed into O’Keefe and left him to freeze and die on a Canton front yard as a snowstorm raged across the region.

But Los Angeles-based Jackson and the rest of her legal team, including original attorney David Yannetti, who was part of the team the whole time, presented a different story: that Read was framed by corrupt local police and prosecutors for O’Keefe’s death and that the science proves O’Keefe was not killed by a vehicle strike.

The O’Keefe family has filed a civil suit of their own against Read as well as the two bars she and O’Keefe drank at in downtown Canton before O’Keefe’s death.

Jackson said that the O’Keefes are “going to have a very, very, very, significant uphill battle. Very obviously, the jury has spoken. It wasn’t like there wasn’t an enormous amount of scrutiny that was put through all the evidence against her. Two times, not once, the jury determined there was no collision.”

So, he said, he’s looking ahead past the O’Keefe suit to Read’s own civil suit.

“We’re not finished with the court system and the court system is going to allow me another opportunity and another platform, and allow Karen another platform, to get the truth out,” he said, “and we damn well intend to do it.”

_____