Karen Read Jury Voted Unanimously to Acquit Her on Murdering Boyfriend | TMZ Live
Karen Read may be tried again for the death of her boyfriend after the judge declared a mistrial, but murder charges may not be on the table ... because according to the defense, the vote on the murder charge was 12 - 0, IN FAVOR OF ACQUITTAL!
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00:00If you have followed the Karen Reid murder trial in Boston, where she was accused of
00:08killing her police officer boyfriend, and she is basically saying these were dirty cops
00:15inside a party house that killed him, a place where she dropped him off, there is a bombshell
00:21that came out.
00:22You know the judge declared a mistrial?
00:25Well it turns out that jury did agree on two of the three counts.
00:31Agreed in favor of Karen Reid.
00:34Agreed unanimously.
00:36So we'll take you back to last week when the judge came out and said, it was a week ago
00:41actually, and declared a mistrial.
00:43And said that the jury was deadlocked, they could not reach a decision.
00:47But nobody ever said.
00:48That's all she said.
00:49The judge didn't say, because there were three counts.
00:52Second degree murder, leaving the scene of an accident where there is either death or
00:56injury, and vehicular manslaughter.
00:59Those are the three things.
01:00And the jury just said we can't agree.
01:02Judge looked at the jury form and said, I'm declaring a mistrial.
01:05That's it.
01:06Right.
01:07What we didn't know at that moment when the judge declared the mistrial is that the jury
01:11had voted unanimously to acquit her on the murder trial, on the murder count.
01:19Acquitted her on second degree murder, and by a 12 to zip vote, also acquit her on leaving
01:25the scene of an accident where there was death or injury.
01:30Now they did, on the third count, they did deadlock.
01:33And it was, we're told, nine to three in favor of guilt.
01:37So it sounds like the jury believed that she was reckless in allegedly hitting her boyfriend
01:44with the car, but that she didn't do it intentionally, and didn't even know she did it, which is
01:51what is required if you're going to find guilty of leaving the scene of an accident.
01:55So that kind of makes sense.
01:58But now the defense is saying, this is double jeopardy.
02:01So all this, so the prosecutor is saying that they are going to retry her.
02:05They said that.
02:06They said that instantly.
02:07Within seconds.
02:08They can't retry her.
02:09Before they even knew what the vote was.
02:11The prosecutors didn't know.
02:12The defense didn't know at that point.
02:15And the judge never said anything.
02:16And the judge didn't say it.
02:17So they can't retry her for murder, right?
02:20No, no.
02:22That's the point of this motion that was just filed.
02:24So we can say that her team, her defense lawyers, filed a motion to dismiss the murder to charge
02:33and leaving the scene based on double jeopardy.
02:35Yeah, and it's an interesting motion because they're saying, look, they had made a decision,
02:39a unanimous decision on those other two charges.
02:42And so they want those not to be retried.
02:44They're like, she is, double jeopardy has attached that you cannot retry on those charges.
02:47You can retry on the second one where they were nine to three in favor of guilt.
02:51I'm not so sure if the judge just looked at it and said, look, we sent back for three
02:54separate charges.
02:55They came back deadlocked.
02:56They weren't able to reach a verdict on the three charges.
02:58So it's unclear if this motion will be successful, but it's certainly going to be a good shot.
03:02They needed to be unanimous on all three.
03:04It's not unclear because the jury had a choice of either finding her guilty of second degree
03:11or guilty of murder or vehicular manslaughter.
03:15The two are very different and the jury could choose one or the other.
03:18They chose to say definitely not murder, but were deadlocked on vehicular manslaughter.
03:24I agree with you as far as it goes, but juries are called a black box for a reason because
03:28there's horse trading in the jury room.
03:29They may have said, I am, I'm going to deadlock us here on this second charge and might change
03:33my vote if that goes against me or something like that.
03:36Because juries are just, they're, they're supposed to have their deliberations be private
03:40and then come out with a unanimous verdict and they couldn't do it in this case.
03:42So it's unclear if that will mean that those two charges that they did come to unanimity
03:46in a straw poll will actually stick for Karen.
03:48I would bet a lot that, that, that, that they will not retry.
03:56They can't retry her on murder.
03:58They just can't.
03:59What are the terms of the bet?
04:00I like this.
04:01I'll give you, I'll give you, I would give you odds.
04:05You're not crazy enough to bet though.
04:07You're cheap enough.
04:08Not to bet.
04:09Exactly.
04:10I don't want that smoke with you.
04:11Yeah, you do not.
04:12You do not want to bet.
04:13But, um, the motion was just filed today and, um, it, it's, I got to say, it's crazy that
04:22the judge in this case didn't disclose this.
04:27This explained to me how attorneys for both sides, the prosecution and the defense, don't
04:33at some point say in, while they're in court, ask the judge for that.
04:38And if not in court, why not immediately after in the judge's chambers?
04:42Well, no, you do it right.
04:43I know you do it.
04:44You want to do it in court.
04:45You do it in court and you say, I want to poll the jury.
04:48I don't have an answer to that question.
04:50I do not have an answer to that.
04:54Even though I think it should have been done, um, they found out and, you know, better late
04:58than never.
04:59Hi, my name's Sierra Simone and I'm from Chicago, Illinois.
05:02I do agree with you all.
05:04I don't think that they're going to retry her for murder.
05:06Um, I feel like this Karen Reed case demonstrates the potential flaws in the prosecution's evidence,
05:12um, which reflected the jury's unanimous acquittal on the murder charges.
05:17This mistrial vehicular manslaughter further underscores the complexity of this case.
05:23It's interesting though that they, they had voted more in favor of, of guilt, guilt in
05:29a manslaughter.
05:30She had damage to her car.
05:31His hair was on a piece of the car.
05:35And that also means that they are throwing out this whole bit about the conspiracy, conspiracy
05:41with the other, with the dirty cops.
05:43You know, everything could be true.
05:45He could have been injured, gone in the house.
05:48They could have done something to him and then thrown him out.
05:52There's a lot.
05:53I mean, why did the cops, um, a lot of them destroy their cell phones?
05:57Why would they, why would they scrub their cell phones?
06:00There's a lot in this case that does not make sense.
06:02Wow.