Karen Read activist blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney will not be called to testify in Read’s new trial and thus will be able to cover the case.

That was the last thing decided Wednesday in a motions hearing held less than a week from when opening statements in Read’s second murder trial, which are expected Tuesday.

The centerpiece of the hearing, however, was a battle over the details of what two experts the defense used at last year’s trial to try to discredit the idea that John O’Keefe was killed by a car strike will be able to testify at the new trial.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, is accused of striking Boston Police Officer O’Keefe, 46, her boyfriend of about two years, with her SUV and leaving him to freeze and die in a major snowstorm on the front lawn of 34 Fairview Road in Canton. She is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of an accident causing death.

“I’ve been ready. I have no choice but to be ready. I feel strong. I have an amazing team,” Read told reporters after the hearing.

ARCCA experts

Special prosecutor Hank Brennan told Judge Beverly J. Cannone that he is concerned with a lack of information regarding two experts from ARCCA, a Pittsburgh-based forensic science group, who each testified that in their analysis O’Keefe’s fatal injuries could not have resulted from a vehicle strike.

“This is the very issue I have been concerned about from the beginning of this case,” Brennan said. “My intent was never to preclude ARCCA from testifying. Never. My intention was to prevent the defense from doing trial by ambush.”

Brennan said that he wants the experts to be able to testify only to reports and analysis that made it in by the deadlines set for evidence and that they be precluded from testifying to anything that comes in late and that the prosecution has no time to prepare for.

The experts, Andrew Rentschler and Daniel Wolfe, and their firm had originally been hired by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston during a mysterious probe of the investigation involving O’Keefe’s death on Jan. 29, 2022. While Brennan definitively stated in court earlier this year that the federal investigation was over, its fingerprints remain all over the Read case.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson said that he and his team have provided everything they can and that the discovery process — for both sides — is a fluid process and often takes place on timelines outside of attorneys’ control.

When it comes to these experts, he said, that process is more controlled. While he said the defense turned over some 1,000 pages last week regarding the ARCCA experts, there is other information he can’t turn over because he doesn’t have access to it himself.

He said that the U.S. Attorney gave permission to both sides to retain ARCCA for the state trial and that the defense took up the offer. But ARCCA’s dealings in the federal probe are off limits. They are still not allowed to testify to classified information, like “what their directives were, that is confidential.”

Turtleboy

Kearney, 43, of Jefferson, faces a 16-count indictment that includes multiple charges of intimidating witnesses — or their family members — in the Read case.

Brennan included Kearney on his list of potential witnesses to be called in trial, but after Wednesday’s hearing Kearney will no longer be called. As Kearney faces charges related to what he may be called to testify, his attorney, Timothy Bradl, said that Kearney would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

Brennan wanted to force Kearney to invoke the right himself instead of through Bradl, but Cannone did not tell him to do so in open court. Because this would preclude his testimony in the case, Brennan has no reason to call him and thus Kearney will not be sequestered during trial.

“If you’re on the sequestered list you can’t talk about the case, you can’t watch the case, you can’t report on the case,” Kearney told reporters after court. “So I would effectively not be able to do my job for like three months if I was sequestered so today was a good day.”