Billy & Lisa in the Morning
Karen Read Trial Recap 7.2.24
Ok, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry? Ooh, a book club. Computer solitaire, huh? Ah, sorry. We were looking for Chumba Casino. That's right, ChumbaCasino.com has over a hundred casino-style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. ChumbaCasino.com. Up to wall, back-to-back coverage on the Karen Reed mistrial yesterday. We heard from Coop, Steve Cooper over Channel 7 News, a couple of minutes ago, and now our in-house legal expert to Catherine Loftus of the law firm of Loftus and Loftus is in studio. And by the way, note my objection. Is that going to be ongoing even though there's been a mistrial and it's kind of done for a while? Yes, for anybody who follows me or does it. Obviously right now, I talk much, most of my content about Karen Reed, but I've been talking for a couple years about lots of different core cases. I talk a lot of politics, life. So, come on over and join us. No, my gosh. And when we do this the second time around, I'm going to follow it as well. All I want to know is what the jury count was. I know. I think that's what everybody wants to know. And the question is, we might never know. It depends on if a juror comes out and tells us. And is that the case when it's a mistrial, they never release the names? So there's a case that came down. I think it's 2014 or 2015 that says, basically, in the interest of the public, we do release it. But because there's not a verdict, the language can be interpreted in the way the court interpreted. And I think given the media, you know, intensity of this, the court and everyone is concerned about the juror's safety and, you know, any potential harassment or things like that. So I'm not surprised that they didn't release it. We find out the morning after the mistrial is declared that the lead investigator, Michael Proctor, has been relieved of duty. Wouldn't that have been something they would have liked to know during the course of the trial? My guess is that was some sort of like negotiated. We've talked about it here a little bit about the union and what the protections and that obviously the state police have to comply with the collective bargaining agreements. And I would bet there was some sort of agreement that wait until the case is over, then we'll announce it. And so he's been relieved of duties. That doesn't mean he's been fired. Basically, he has a hearing pending, you know, I don't know when it is. He's gonna be taken off the Norfolk County District Attorney's homicide unit. He'll have a hearing about whether he penned in the investigation. He remains working whether he's suspended without pay with or he's suspended with pay. So the actual disciplinary hearing is a waste down the road. But wouldn't that have helped the defense? It became up during the trial? Well, I think they still probably couldn't have asked about it because they might have been able to ask if he was relieved of duties, but there's still not a conclusion to the investigation. So it's a little bit up in the right. So right now, even though he's taken off, taken out of the, you know, not the line of duty, but you know what I mean? Test duty. There's still not any actual conclusion until the Ia investigation is finished. So it will be interesting to see the next time around how that factors in when they have this new trial. Will the prosecution be able to introduce any new evidence? Or does that never happen? It's not that it never happens is always eat. You know, if things came up on on both sides, that was undiscoverable or, you know, that you didn't have access to the first time, you can make the argument to the judge. Ultimately, it's always going to be up into the discussion of the judge. What it likely will be is going to be the same evidence, but presented a little bit differently. So they can use different experts. So they could they'd have to go get new experts because they don't think that they have any for the Commonwealth, you mean? Yes, they don't think that they have any experts retained for the first trial that they didn't call. So they would probably need permission to do that. You know, it's really it's the interesting thing is it could be an entirely different trial. We could really have a shortened kind of intense version of the Commonwealth's trial that the defense could focus really on the police investigation and reasonable. So it's maybe less so gorgeous. Yeah, I think, you know, they haven't come out and said what they're going to do. We might know that on the July 22nd status conference. I think it would probably be in the best interest to drop the second degree. I think that would take a lot of pressure off of everything. There's a lot less to prove that way if they want to actually prove this case against our as we talked about the second degree seems since the prosecutor was so highly criticized, you know, for the way he presented the case, is it possible they'll name a new prosecutor? It definitely is. And I think there's probably a possibility that somebody joins him instead of replacing him because I think it's pretty clear that he knows the case very well. He knows the substance of it. He he understands the evidence, but you need somebody. I do think that goes a little bit more toe to toe with David Unetti and Alan Jackson, at least in the way in which they present themselves. So it wouldn't be a bad idea if we had two prosecutors. They kind of volley back and forth like we did with the defense. Please go ahead. When are you guys? I had one question about the statement that the jury put out, which was so well written. They kept going back to their moral personal moral conflicts. So I have like a little text thread with my friends about this. And one of the questions raised was why does the jury decide on facts and not heart? And I felt like it was it was a little strange. So the interesting thing is if you think about it this way, they are deciding it based on the facts, but we all come from different backgrounds. We have different sets of morals. We have different perspectives. And you are supposed to use, you know, the judge says, use your common sense, use your life experience. So we all look at, even though you're looking, basically what they said is it's not that we're not looking at the evidence. It's not that we're not understanding the evidence. We're evaluating it differently based on our own moral convictions. So that means that, you know, somebody looking at the tail light evidence, which obviously was one of the main factors, somebody thinks one way, somebody thinks the other, the evidence is the same, but they're evaluating it differently. And ultimately, I think what sometimes gets lost is that the system is run by human beings and human beings were all flawed. We all have, you know, different perspectives. And it's not, it's not perfect. It's not a perfect system. And this is the closest we can try to get in their note to the judge. It seems like they kind of went out of their way to make sure people understood there were more than one person locked out. That's how it felt to me. They said others. They said, some of us and then others, plural. Right. And when they said we're deeply divided, the word the, you know, as soon as we read it, I was on the phone with my dad, the other Loftus and Loftus and Loftus and he said, that sounds like a little here. Everybody wants to talk at the mistrial declared yesterday and you want to go talk back to your phone. Let's go to the phone first and who have we got winning. All right. As I walk away. Okay. Well, okay. Do you need a second there for that? We can play the talk backs to get to over here. Go to Marissa. Marissa. Hi. Good morning. Okay. Marissa comments. Questions. What have you got for us? Oh, yes. My question I do for Katherine. One is what happens legitimately the next couple steps. So I know it's gonna go out to a trial next year. That's number one. But what are the actual steps and then two, how do these two parties, everything psychologically get back to a life or do they now live a completely different life? Oh boy. So the first thing that's going to happen, we have a July 22nd status conference at that point. We're probably going to pick a trial date I would expect. So all of the parties, you know, we have to consider the courts calendar, the attorney's trial schedules, all of the witnesses, they're going to need transcripts, you know, kind of reevaluate how they're going to put the case in. Lisa and I were just talking about that. Originally, I thought the end of the year, but with Thanksgiving and Christmas, we'll probably go into the first of the year. And in between, you know, it's the hard part about it ended in a mistrial is obviously for everybody, it's not done. You know, we've spent two and a half months putting, you know, the family members of both Karen Reed, both John O'Keefe, you know, really putting everything into it that the attorneys and really everything is just on pause until you start again. So I'm not sure that you really can go back to a normal life until this is actually over. I know one thing the bars are going to be busy. All those people have more time on their hands. Those bars are going to see a serious bump in business. All right, we got some questions here for Katherine. Good morning, morning crew. I need to know for when Katherine comes in. Now that Michael Proctor has been quote unquote reassigned, do we think this will affect the DA actually going for a retrial or once all of the internal investigations and the federal investigations are done, will we be able to bring that information up in trial that we weren't allowed to this time? So I actually don't think I would be very, very surprised if the DA's office did not know that Proctor that the state police were going to take Proctor off the case. Like I'm sure that they already were privy to that information and made the decision to publicly say we're going to retry Karen Reed again. I do think it changes a little bit about whether they call the Commonwealth calls him, whether the defense calls them. Interestingly enough, the testimony that came out when Proctor did anything, the vast majority of it was with somebody else. So that means that somebody else can testify to the vast majority of what he was doing. If there is a conclusion to the IA investigation or if something else comes out for them in federal investigation, if he gets called, they certainly can use that when he's on the witness stand. Wow. Now earlier, did you suggest so when everybody comes back July 22nd and that's when I guess the prosecution will officially say yes, we're going ahead with the trial. Then it won't start until the first of next year. Did you say that? Well, I think, you know, you remember, this is Norfolk Superior Court. This is a small courthouse. They have an entire criminal docket and civil docket. So there's all kinds of people, other defendants who are waiting for their day in court for their trials to be heard. You know, Alan Jackson, David Unetti are all busy attorneys. Adam Lally in the Commonwealth, they have a whole caseload. So, you know, you have to think about it really comes down to scheduling and you would have to get all of those people on the same page. So that leads me to believe you're going to need a little bit of time to do that. And plus the Brian Walsh case is coming up. Right. That's a big case. And again, like you said, I mean, it's a small courthouse, right? So they can really only handle one big trial at a time. Yeah. And you know, then there's like, there's all kinds of, you know, people waiting every single day for a trials in Superior Court that we don't hear about. Right. We can't, you know, everybody has a right. Is it possible? Proctor won't testify in the next trial? It's definitely possible. I mean, it's possible that the Commonwealth doesn't call him if they don't call him, then the defense has to make a decision about whether they want to put him on the stand. You know, who knows what the results of the IA investigation are, what the, you know, that there's a lot of ifs that we don't know yet. And I think we hopefully will have more information one way or the other if there is an ending to the IA investigation, if anything comes from the federal investigation. And don't you think that the jurors between now and the next trial are all going to be talking publicly? I don't know. I don't know. I kind of got the vibe from the note that they, even though they were, you know, they were divided, they seemed cohesive to me. Yeah. It seemed like we're a little family. Maybe where everyone, you know, makes, it comes to the decision that we're not going to talk about it in. But I always feel like someone will step out. Yeah, I think we might, we might need a little bit of time. I think they're all on the phone right now. Yeah. Well, Steve Cooper, we just had him on and he kind of made, I don't know, he was saying that everyone's working behind the scenes. Oh, I mean, listen, everybody wants, we all want it. We all want to know what was the split because it makes a big difference. Yeah. If it's, if it's 10, two, and most of them are not guilty, or if it's eight, four, most of them are guilty, it does make a difference in what happens next and on both sides. And if jurors start talking and doing interviews, what they say can have an effect on the next trial, right? It, it, I mean, it can theoretically, if, if you have a jury, the next time we in piano a jury, they would, they're all going to be asked, have, well, have you heard about Karen Reed case? You know, how much of it can you be impartial? So, you know, Justin, talk backs. No, the, um, the alternate juror that spoke out said that they were very close and they did puzzles together. Yeah. And celebrated birthdays. They definitely were, you know, I mean, they've been in this kumbaya. So I had one more question for you. If, if you've heard of the Karen Reed trial and you know, a little bit about it, can you still be on the jury? You can, as long as you can be fair and impartial, you know, there's a, I know everybody says, there's no way we could get a jury. First, we said that the first time. Right. And we did. And two, you would be surprised at how many people are, they peripherally know this is going on, but they're not actually paying attention. I mean, even people around me are like, I don't know. Yeah, me and my life too. Yeah. Just they don't have time. People don't have time. A lot. And a lot of people feel like if you unless you have the time to devote to it, it's not even where it's going into, right? It's so intense. Well, my friends much must be a bunch of losers because they're all fully We have some jury questions here for for Katherine. With the Commonwealth retrying the case, I feel like they're going to have a really hard time finding a new jury that doesn't know anything about this case. And even if they moved it out of Massachusetts, a lot of people around the nation in the world know about this case. But my question is, do you think the defense will want to keep it in Massachusetts knowing all of the support that she has here that could kind of help sway a jury in her favor? So they can't move it out of Massachusetts. It has to stay in Massachusetts because it's a state court criminal proceeding. They can move it to another county. I think the defense would not want to. They want to keep it in Norfolk County. If anybody wants to move it out, it would be the Commonwealth. Whose decision is it? Ultimately, it's the judge. Ultimately, and it'll be based on so I mean, it's going to be based on you have to evaluate whether the defense in really comes down to the defendant. So if the defendant is the one who says we don't care if it's here, you want to make sure the defendant has a fair and a positive jury. So, you know, it's it'd be interesting. I feel like there's a fair chance it stays in and it's going to be the same judge. Definitely. It's not definitely. So she took jurisdiction over the case. It could theoretically go to somebody else. Again, just depending on schedules, account. I think it would actually be really interesting if somebody else took it because, you know, there's so much there's so much pressure on her. And I think people would be surprised that you might get a tougher judge than judge. You know, I mean, you know, you know, you know what you wish for Billy's on the phone. Let's go to Billy. Billy, you have a question to comment? Yeah, quick question. Oh, first of all, Billy, are you coming up for the fireworks at the Tuscan tomorrow? Absolutely. I'll be there. All right. Okay. Well, I have a question for Attorney Loftif. So now in this case, they were able to bring up the grand jury testimony. And the next case, are they going to be able to bring up the grand jury testimony and the testimony from this case? Yes. So anytime you testify under oath, that's that can be used. So anything that was used, anything that any of the witnesses testified to in this trial can be used theoretically to impeach them in the next trial. So, you know, if anybody changes their testimony when they when they're on the stand the next time, you know, they'll say, didn't you say that? Oh, yeah. So that seems like it's going to be a hard melted climate. And that's why they need all the transcripts and they need to make sure, you know, see what everybody said. And there's a lot that goes into retrying it. Now, do all the pink people just go away? I guess not. I guess would be the still be there. You know, I think maybe a little bit of time for everybody who's not a bad thing. You know, like, let's let's take it down a little bit of notch. For me, what this really showed this hung jury is that it's not always the same. It's often very different inside the courtroom and what the jury is thinking than what everybody's saying outside because I think the the thought outside was one thing. Everybody felt pretty strongly. Oh, we're going to get it not guilty right away. And clearly that's not where the jury jury wants. So I think it's important that we kind of all take a breath. We have a victim here and a victim's family. And we have a defendant who is, you know, being tried. And so I think a little space is okay. I have a superficial question, which I mean, it is what it is. But she has all this time now, Karen, right? Yeah. Is she free to do whatever she wants? Yeah. I mean, could she travel? Can she? I think she had to surrender a passport as part of her conditions. But, you know, they might ask for a bail reduction. I think currently the bail that's posted is maybe 50,000 or 80,000. So they could ask potentially for a bail reduction, get some of the money back, maybe change some of her conditions. I mean, the the argument is that, you know, is she a flight risk? Is she going to get on a plane and never come back? No, of course, she's going to come back and fight this. So she could do whatever she wants in the interim. Well, chicken, that's interesting. Well, Catherine, God, I feel like this is a good bye, at least for now. Hey, I mean, when things happen, yeah, or legal cases, which they will, I'm okay with being your permanent, uh, on a legal expert. You call you have a question, Billy, you call me. Yeah, because without permission from you, I've been calling you are in-house legal expert. And you really work. But now you're going to continue being our in-house legal expert. Whenever we have questions. Yeah, we'll just call her up. I call my lawyer. He's such a good lawyer. But by tomorrow morning, she's going to be working in Alaska. So, dress warm. 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