Unfazed Karen Read stares down lingering questions about 'dog bites,' texts with retrial ready for kickoff

With jury selection complete and a last-minute motions hearing out of the way, Karen Read's retrial on murder and other charges in the death of Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe is finally set to kick off with opening statements next week.

The 45-year-old former financial analyst and adjunct professor is accused of hitting her then-boyfriend with a Lexus SUV after a drunken argument, then fleeing the scene and leaving him to die in the cold during a blizzard.

Her first trial ended with a deadlocked jury amid allegations of police bias, a botched investigation and the defense claim that she was being framed for the crime.

"I've been ready. I have no choice but to be ready," Read told reporters on the courthouse steps. "I feel strong. I've got an amazing team. And I'm anxious."

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She also responded to a question about prosecutors' plans to use her own televised interviews against her in their opening statement next week.

Read granted numerous interviews to TV stations, magazines and local media after the end of her first trial. She repeatedly maintained her innocence.

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The 15-second clip is "nothing that fazes me in any way," she said. She declined to say which interviews were used.

At the hearing on Wednesday, the judge ruled on a handful of pending motions and took others under advisement. She is expected to hand down decisions in the coming days.

One pending motion is about whether an independent third party should be assigned to read text messages in court. Texts from witnesses, investigators and Read herself played a prominent role in the first trial.

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Special prosecutor Hank Brennan is asking for a dedicated reader to read text messages in testimony. Defense attorney Alan Jackson disagreed, noting it could be theatrical and irreparably impact the jury. Judge Beverly Cannone took their remarks under advisement and did not issue a ruling in court.

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"It’s actually very common, and we have seen law clerks do it because we don’t want someone who would add a theatrical component to those messages," said Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts defense attorney who is following the case. "We just want it to be read in a very neutral way, so not to create more drama."

Some of the messages read aloud in the first trial were "really not great," she added. She said the judge could end up approving Brennan's request.

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"But I also feel that if the text messages go up on the screen, the jury can read them and take whatever they want from it," she added.

One key debate is whether the jury should hear expert witnesses go back and forth over whether injuries to O'Keefe's right arm were caused by Chloe, the former German shepherd owned by Brian Albert and his family. Albert, a fellow Boston police officer, hosted an after-party on the night O'Keefe was last seen alive.

O'Keefe was found the next morning on Albert's front lawn. Prosecutors allege Read hit him with her Lexus SUV and left him for dead in a blizzard. The defense has argued that she didn't kill him, someone else did, and that she's being framed in a police-involved cover-up.

Cannone had already limited the claims that Read's defense could make in pointing toward a potential alternate perpetrator, but the issue saw a renewed court battle with both sides wanting to add last-minute experts to the debate over the injuries to O'Keefe's arm.

The experts will not be able to blame or exclude Chloe as the source of the injuries, but they can share their professional opinions on whether they are indeed dog bites.

Separately, the judge said Aidan Kearney, a local blogger who has closely covered the case and is also facing pending charges for allegedly intimidating witnesses, will be exempt from a witness sequestration order.

She left open an exception involving the witnesses he's accused of going after.

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Kearney's attorney, Timothy Bradl, told the judge that his client would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights if called to the witness stand, and Brennan said that if Kearney planned to do so, he wouldn't call him as a witness.

Exempting him from the sequestration order will allow him to more fully cover the trial as it plays out.