"What if I clipped him in the knee and he passed out?" Commonwealth Rests | Karen Read Trial Day 23

Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield

True Crime

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Commonwealth rests — but not before jurors hear from crash expert Dr. Judson Welcher one last time. Karen Read’s lawyer presses him hard on his assumptions, a Ring camera controversy, and whether glass evidence really tells the full story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield, and this is Drop Dead Serious, and it's day 23 in the
0:10.4	Karen Reed trial and the prosecution dropped the mic. The Commonwealth officially rested its
0:16.3	case today after six long weeks of testimony, but not before leaving the courtroom in stunned silence
0:24.6	with one final piece of evidence, a video of Karen Reed herself, speaking candidly for the
0:32.8	docu-series, Body in the Snow. But before that video ever rolled, tensions in the courtroom were already on a slow boil.
0:42.2	The morning started with a swing and a mess. Before the jury came in, Judge Beverly Canoni ruled that the defense could not cross-examine the prosecution's crash reconstruction expert, Dr. Judson Welcher,
0:55.6	about Massachusetts State Trooper Joseph Paul or about the medical examiner either. And with that
1:02.0	out of the way, they brought in the jury. And once they were seated, Dr. Welcher returned to the
1:07.5	stand and Karen's lawyer, Bob Alessie, picked up right where he left off from day 22.
1:12.6	Karen's lawyer hammered the issue of glass, pressing Dr. Welcher on whether there was any definitive proof that the clear broken glass,
1:23.6	the pieces that were found on Karen Reed's SUV bumper came from the drinking glass found near
1:29.8	John O'Keefe's body. Because if not, that actually casts doubt on the prosecution's entire
1:36.6	crash theory. Dr. Welcher admitted that the fragments looked similar, but that no, he could not say for certain. The glass had not been
1:47.6	forensically matched. And then Karen's lawyer turned to one of the most hotly debated topics
1:53.5	of the day, the ring camera footage from John O'Keefe's home. He questioned the accuracy
2:00.3	of Dr. Welch's video analysis, pointing out that the ring camera video
2:04.8	used in 2022, the night that John O'Keefe died, came from cameras that had since been taken
2:11.4	down and replaced.
2:13.8	And that the reconstruction work in 2024 came from brand new cameras installed at the home since.
2:22.2	Hardly the same vantage point, hardly the same images of what things looked like the night John died.
2:29.8	Dr. Welcher confirmed that's true.
2:31.9	That is true.
	...

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