Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman who was acquitted of killing her police officer boyfriend last year after two widely publicized murder trials, revealed Friday why she filed a lawsuit alleging misconduct and negligence in the investigation that led to her prosecution.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“This was always our plan, that I had to save my own life first,” Read said on “TODAY” while flanked by her two attorneys.“I have to continue fighting for justice.
The acquittal is deserved, but the wrongs have not been completely righted.”“They’ve been happening along the way, but I always knew this was going to happen if I could get the help legally to do this,” she added.Read sued the Massachusetts State Police and the town of Canton on Thursday, alleging that misconduct and negligence led to her prosecution in the death in 2022 of John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer.Her attorneys argued in the lawsuit that “an embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot” was at the heart of two agencies that investigated O’Keefe’s death, the State Police and the Canton Police Department.Karen Read and John O'Keefe.via DatelineThe lawsuit comes after Read was acquitted last June of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while driving under the influence and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.
She was convicted of a single charge — operating under the influence of liquor.She was acquitted less than a year after her first trial ended with a hung jury.On Friday, Read’s lawyer Alan Jackson explained that the goal of the lawsuit is to “bring to the light the institutional biases, the institutional corruption that permeates the Massachusetts law enforcement system.”“The law speaks in dollars, but that’s not what the ultimate goal is here,” Jackson told “TODAY” co-anchor Craig Melvin.“What Karen wants, you...