The three state police officers under investigation are Officer Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case, and two of his supervisors, Detective Lieutenant Brian Tully and Sergeant Yuri Bukhenik.
Proctor is currently suspended without pay after his abusive and misogynistic text messages about Read to friends and colleagues came to light during Read’s first trial, which ended in a mistrial on July 1 after jurors said they had reached an impasse after several days of deliberations. The new trial is scheduled to begin on Jan. 27.
On Tuesday, state police said Tully and Bukhenik were also the subject of an internal investigation. The agency said both remain fully employed but did not provide additional details. The State Police Association of Massachusetts, the union that represents state police officers, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
“I would imagine that the fact that these three are under internal investigation for their conduct in this case would be a justification for impeachment in a new trial, given the potential for bias and a number of other issues that impact the credibility of the witnesses,” Medwed said.
He said that an “adage of trial practice is that your case is often only as good as your witnesses. You can’t pick and choose the bulk of your witnesses, and those witnesses are more likely to harm the state’s case than help it.”
But Read’s prosecutors have options, said Jack Lu, a retired Supreme Court justice.
“I’m paraphrasing Mark Twain in saying that the reports of the prosecution’s death have been greatly exaggerated,” Lu said by email. “My view would be that it is a perfectly valid choice for the jury to decide that they can trust the prosecution’s evidence, but they could perfectly, and just as validly, do the opposite.”
Lu said prosecutors “can argue that these are overzealous but well-meaning police officers trying to convict someone they believe is guilty … and that this behavior is deeply regrettable but does provide reliable evidence.”
Read’s lawyers, meanwhile, could “admit the lesser charge and convict on the two higher charges as evidence of undue prejudice against the defendant,” he said.
Read, 44, of Mansfield, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, intoxicated manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crime resulting in injury and death. Prosecutors allege she was drunk and intentionally drove her Lexus SUV into her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, on Jan. 29, 2022, after dropping him off in front of a Canton home following a night of bar hopping and heavy drinking.
Read’s lawyers say she was framed and O’Keefe entered a home then owned by another Boston cop, fatally beat him in the basement, and then his body was dumped on the lawn.
Proctor’s testimony has seriously damaged the prosecution’s case and raised doubts about the integrity of the investigation, experts said. Now that he has been removed from office, his credibility will be further eroded, they said.
“It will be difficult for prosecutors to salvage this case,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who commented on Read’s first trial for Court TV, said in a statement. “Proctor was one of the worst law enforcement witnesses I have ever seen, perhaps the worst since Mark Fuhrman in the O.J. Simpson case.”
Rahmani said Proctor was “not likable, not credible, and not what you want as your lead detective in a case where the defense is alleging a cover-up. With two other police officers as witnesses who are now reportedly under investigation, the Commonwealth will have its hands full during the retrial.”
Shira M. Diner, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the credibility of witnesses “is never a secondary factor in the question of guilt.”
“That said, it’s hard to know what a jury is going to focus on when evaluating testimony,” she said by email. “The Commonwealth’s case could look the same or it could look different at the next trial. I’m sure they’re evaluating their case from the first trial and generally looking at what they want to keep and what they want to change.”
During the trial, Bukhenik testified that he and another investigator went to Read’s parents’ home in Dighton on Jan. 29, 2022, to see what she remembered from the night before. Read interrupted the interview when they asked for details about a three-point turn she said she made after O’Keefe got out of her SUV in front of the Canton home.
Tully told the jury that Read called O’Keefe dozens of times between 12:33 a.m. and 6:03 a.m. the morning of his death. Video footage shows Read driving to the Canton home for about 45 minutes before seeing O’Keefe’s body lying on the lawn with two other women.
Proctor, meanwhile, testified to several pieces of evidence, including pieces of red and clear plastic and shards of glass from Read’s broken taillight, which he said investigators found on the front lawn near where she allegedly struck O’Keefe.
But it was his crude lyrics, in which he ridiculed Read’s medical condition and called her “retarded” and “an idiot,” that the defense seized on in an attempt to show that he was prejudiced against her from the start.
“It is an incredibly difficult task for prosecutors to retry this case given the compromised position of the investigative team,” said Mark J. Geragos, a leading Los Angeles criminal defense attorney.
Globe’s Nick Stoico contributed to this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected].
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