This is Spring Training, and both sides are getting ready for Opening Day on April 1st.
The schedule just lines up too perfectly to not milk that perfunctory cliche for all its worth.
If you’re looking for clever, original content, you’ve come to the wrong place, Hoss.
The major difference being that the wins and losses in court will count later on.
And in that respect, Read’s defense team just lost three straight.
How those losses affect the actual trial, only time will tell.
But I’ll give a shot to sort them out as clearly and directly as possible.
Personally, I look at them and see dog bites and scratches.
Make of that what you will.
At trial, the defense produced an expert on the subject of dog bites, a Dr. Marie Russell.
And testified that in her opinion, the marks on O’Keefe’s body were consistent with a dog attack.
(Not to cast aspersions on Chloe Albert, mind you.
Every dog is innocent until proven guilty.)
Yet earlier this year,the Commonwealth tried to exclude Russell from the retrial, but failed.
The prosecution has since countered with their own expert, a Jim Crosby.
Who does not have Russell’scurriculum vitae.
Or her honorific “Doctor.”
What he does have, is that rarest of all things in 2025: A YouTube channel.
But it’s hard not to notice the difference in how Judge Beverly Cannone ruled on identical motions.
She said her decision was a close call.
And that only a medical doctor can make such determinations in front of the jury.
At least we’ll get to see both of them take the stand.
May the best expert win.
The one that was presented to the jury.
With all sorts of missing footage.
And an image that was reversed.
And no one said it wasn’t.
The public actually figured it out after seeing that signs on the back wall read backwards.
Plus the image was reversed, but the timestamp wasn’t.
Suggesting it was a two-step process: Flip the image, then add the timestamp.
Which would take a pretty miraculous accident.
Here’s where this gets complicated and you have to keep track of the names.
Judge Cannone emphatically denied the allegations, however.
…
Why does this matter?
Some of the videos were released to the defense as recently as last week.
Which is another thing the internet has come up with.
Which, not coincidentally, wasfour daysafter O’Keefe’s death.
So mere days after Read’s car was towed into the Canton PD sally port.
And who knows how long after the video started getting preserved, edited, flipped, and shared.
Regardless, Cannone doesn’t see it that way.
So it’s another L for Karen Read.
Therefore, he said, there was no final verdict.
In literally hundreds of trials I watched (OK, half watched.
I say again I spent most of my Court Officer career focused on writing Barstool blogs.
I was an expert at multi-slacking), I never witnessed a conclusion anywhere near as messy as this.
There were mistrials where a jury tried for as long as they could but couldn’t reach a verdict.
Such is the price you pay for requiring them to be unanimous.
Them’s the breaks.
It’s a further complication in a criminal case that already cornered the market.
He said it’s building a “Wilderness of Mirrors.”
And to think, the regular season is still a month away.
