As he prepared to prosecute Karen Read in her second murder trial, a Massachusetts district attorney asked the state for $1 million in assistance.
In June, Read was acquitted of second-degree murder related to the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe, nearly a year after her first trial ended in a mistrial in July 2024.
Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey asked state lawmakers for financial assistance in October 2024, as his office prepared to try Read a second time, a letter obtained by NBC10 revealed.
“If you talk about the perfect storm, I have that going on in Norfolk County,” Morrissey wrote in a letter addressed to Massachusetts House Speaker Ronald Mariano, according to the report.
“A simple domestic motor vehicle homicide case in Canton has blown up to a national sensation. The time, the effort, and the resources the office has had to commit to prosecute the first case and now for a second retrial are substantial,” he said, referring to the Read retrial. “It is an unusually well financed defense.”
To get a sense of just how much was poured into the defense, Read owed her legal team $5 million as of last October, months before her second trial began, Vanity Fair reported at the time.
Morrissey noted that his decisions to appoint experts and special prosecutors strained resources and asked for a one-time payment of $1 million, the letter states.
The DA tapped Hank Brennan last September to lead the prosecution. Brennan billed the DA’s office more than half a million dollars — $566,000 — for his work on the case from September 2024 through the trial’s conclusion in June, invoices obtained by NBC10 showed.
He charged $250 per hour, according to the documents.
Testing and expert witnesses also cost the DA’s office hundreds of thousands of dollars, the outlet reported.
A supplemental appropriations act for fiscal year 2024 shows that state lawmakers approved $1 million for the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association. Online records show Governor Maura Healy signed the bill into law last December.
The DA accessed roughly $400,000 of those funds, a spokesperson for Morrissey told NBC10.
The Independent has reached out to the DA’s office for more information about the letter and how much it received from the supplemental appropriations legislation.
Read was acquitted of most of the serious charges she faced on July 18 but was found guilty of a lesser charge of drunk driving in connection with the 2022 death.
