Karen Read has lost her bid to toss the 2nd degree murder charge and another related one in  her upcoming retrial in the case surrounding the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe.

In a memorandum issued Friday,  Norfolk Superior Court “denied” Read’s motion to dismiss the charges based on double jeopardy, finding that Read was “not acquitted” of the charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injury or death, and that Read’s defense had in fact consented to the motion to declare a mistrial follow a deadlocked jury.

For those reasons, “double jeopardy is not implicated” as the state intends to retry the case, the decision concludes.

Read and her defense team argued in a series of motions before Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone that the charges should be tossed after they heard from several jurors who claimed the jury in its closed door deliberations had concluded unanimously that Read was not guilty on those charges, and in fact was deadlocked on a third manslaughter charge.

Trying Read again on the more serious charges would constitute double jeopardy, they said.

“We have evidence here that the jury acquitted Ms. Read,” defense lawyer Marty Weinberg told the court during a hearing on the motions earlier this summer. “What could be more central to the core values of our criminal justice system than to make a judicial determination with a respected and experienced Superior Court judge whether that is so or not and, if it’s so, stop her re-prosecution?”

Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended in July when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.

Prosecutors from the Norfolk DA’s office countered that the defense team’s motions to toss the charges were based on an  “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim,” and “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.”

– Developing