One of the most crucial questions in litigation communications is whether what you say publicly will help or harm your legal case. This issue has perhaps never been more discussed than with regard to the Karen Read murder retrial underway in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, by mowing him down with her car, perhaps intentionally, in 2022 in Canton, Massachusetts. Almost from the start, Read and her legal team have been energetic in having her do media interviews to tell her side of the story. Some legal observers credit the strategy with aiding her case and perhaps even helping bring about a hung jury and mistrial last year. The retrial began this April.

Murder cases aren’t our typical litigation communications fare — we work more in the area of commercial litigation and the like. But the core issue is the same: What are the trade-offs in speaking out publicly on a legal matter? Admittedly, we have a bias in favor of making one’s case in the court of public opinion.

Some more background on the Read case: The incident took place in January 2022 at the home of a fellow Boston police officer of O’Keefe’s. Read, who was an analyst with Fidelity Investments, alleges that O’Keefe was beaten during a gathering in that home that night, leading to his death. She argues she’s being set up by law enforcement.

Extrajudicial Statements

Hank Brennan, the criminal-defense lawyer hired to head up the prosecution for the second trial, has made much more use of Read’s extrajudicial statements than in the first go-round, sprinkling his presentation with video clips of her TV interviews. Brennan is trying to show that Read changed her story over time and that she may have admitted wrongdoing. For example, she’s mused in interviews about whether she may have hit O’Keefe with her car.

Read’s public comments are a hot topic on legal podcasts on YouTube, in addition to going viral on TikTok, two platforms that are becoming important parts of the litigation communications landscape.

For example, on May 6, Peter Tragos’ Lawyer You Know podcast highlighted a video clip from an interview Read did with Investigation Discovery that was shown in court. In it, Read said she had pondered out loud whether she could have hit O’Keefe because she and others found his body near where she’d dropped him off at the house the night before.

Tragos opined that the clip could be seen as supporting the defense’s case — “and I think that that was part of their risk assessment on her doing these interviews.”

‘A Problem’

But it could also help the prosecution, he said. Jurors who leaned toward voting guilty in the first trial said Read’s admissions that she had been drinking that night and that her car had been near where O’Keefe was found were “enough for us to say she hit him with a car,” Tragos said. “And then we listen to Karen Read herself in her own words say the same thing — that it made her think that that might have been what happened. That, in my opinion, is a problem.”

Another popular YouTube podcaster, Lawyer Lee, has strongly defended the Read legal team’s use of the media. “They did that extremely effectively,” she said in one podcast. “That was one of the reasons that there was such a public interest in her case and that the public in general believed that she was being railroaded. It had a lot to do with the fact that they were open with the evidence that they had.”

Yet, Lawyer Lee too recognized the other side. “There are consequences of that, and people make statements that then conceivably could trip them up,” she said. “So, I acknowledge that both are true. I still think what Karen Read’s lawyers did was the right choice.”

Bottom line? While we believe strongly in using the media when embroiled in a legal matter, caution must be taken. That’s because, as we’re seeing in the Read trial, what you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. It’s unwise to wing this — litigation communications should be carefully planned. You must get your position straight and communicate it consistently.

Thinking out loud during a media interview is a bad idea.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

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