Karen Read’s legal defense team announced they had scored a win at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with a ruling uncovering data they say could exonerate their client.

Read, of Mansfield, is accused of murdering her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022, following a night of drinking with acquaintances at two Canton bars.

The prosecution says the relationship was strained and she killed her boyfriend with her car in front of 34 Fairview Road in Canton, the scene of a planned get-together with others who prosecutors say never saw either member of the couple walk inside.

Read’s defense says she dropped O’Keefe off there, the then-home of fellow Boston cop Brian Albert, and went home. They finger Albert and his sister-in-law Jennifer McCabe as the ones actually culpable in O’Keefe’s death. Both Albert and McCabe have secured their own lawyers in the case.

On Wednesday, the SJC ordered the Norfolk Superior Court to issue the defense’s requested summons for McCabe’s cell phone records for the night that O’Keefe died, but not for the entire multi-day period requested by the defense.

The ruling largely upholds trial court Judge Beverly J. Cannone’s ruling denying the records, but disagreed in her finding that the defendant had not met the legal standard for subpoenaing records related to McCabe’s purported search for the term “ho(w) long to die in cold” hours before O’Keefe’s body was found. That  request, the ruling states, “is relevant and sought in good faith. That said, this does not necessitate the production of records to the extent sought by the defendant.”

“We are extremely pleased that the Supreme Judicial Court agreed with us that Jennifer McCabe’s phone usage records from an independent source during the time surrounding John’s death is relevant and material to this case,” Read defense attorney Alan Jackson said in a statement.

McCabe’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, sees the SJC order as upholding Cannone’s decision that most of the records requested were overly broad and what was allowed was already on the record.

“Clearly this is a win for Jen McCabe and certainly Brian Albert,” Reddington told the Herald.