Jury Near Boston Deadlocks in Murder Case Against Karen Read

A judge in Massachusetts declared a mistrial on Monday in the high-profile murder case against Karen Read, the suburban Boston woman who was accused of killing her boyfriend, a police officer, after a night out drinking.

The circumstances surrounding the death of the boyfriend, John O’Keefe, during a blizzard in 2022 became an obsession for people in the Boston region and a global audience of true-crime fanatics, as well as conspiracy theorists who are certain that Ms. Read has been framed.

The jurors began deliberating early last week, and twice signaled to the court that they were having trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. In a note to Judge Beverly J. Cannone of Norfolk Superior Court on Monday morning, they wrote that they were “deeply divided by fundamental differences in our opinions and state of mind,” and that “consensus is unattainable.”

The judge then read them last-ditch instructions about the importance of reaching a verdict. But hours later, the 12 jurors declared themselves deadlocked, and Judge Cannone declared a mistrial. Prosecutors said in a statement that they intended to try the case again.

During the trial, lawyers for Ms. Read, 44, picked apart the prosecution’s assertion that she intentionally struck Mr. O’Keefe after a night out drinking in January 2022, leaving him to die of head injuries and hypothermia as a blizzard raged. They proposed an alternate theory: that he was fatally beaten at a late-night party hosted by another Boston police officer in Canton, Mass., and then dumped outside in the snow.

“The incontrovertible fact is, you have been lied to in this courtroom,” Alan Jackson, a lawyer for Ms. Read, said during closing arguments. “One lie begets another, and it’s a malignancy that grows — and that, folks, is how a cover-up is born.”