Lawyers of the Year: David R. Yannetti

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Part of a series of profiles on our 2025 Lawyers of the Year.

In January 2022, during what Boston criminal defense lawyer David R. Yannetti recalls as one of the biggest snowstorms since the Blizzard of ’78, he received a call from a woman who thought police suspected her of a crime.

The woman’s name was Karen Read, and Yannetti would soon learn that she was suspected of hitting her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in the snow outside the Canton home of another Boston police officer, Brian Albert. Read had dropped off O’Keefe at Albert’s house after a night of drinking at a local bar.

Yannetti did not realize, however, that Read would soon become a household name not only locally, but nationally and internationally.

We were really in a bubble, and I frankly didn’t truly understand just how big the case was until it was over.

Charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene of a fatal accident, Read maintained her innocence throughout. She theorized in her defense that O’Keefe was fatally assaulted inside Albert’s home, where a number of people had gathered after leaving the bar, and was then dragged outside and left in the snow to make it look like an accident.

For reasons that Yannetti can only speculate about, a media frenzy grew around the case, featuring allegations that investigators — some of whom allegedly had connections to those at the gathering — mishandled evidence and failed to investigate the Albert home in an effort to protect the people inside. Meanwhile, Read became a cause célèbre to legions of people who believe she was framed.

Throughout the first trial in 2024, which ended in a hung jury, and a month-long retrial in spring 2025, Yannetti tried to block out the noise while focusing on highlighting the flaws in the commonwealth’s case.

Sure enough, the second trial resulted in an acquittal on all three major felony charges, with Read being convicted only of operating under the influence.

“Once the bell rings and the judge takes the bench, you are focused just on doing your job, and I mainly forgot that the cameras were there,” Yannetti remembers. “We were really in a bubble, and I frankly didn’t truly understand just how big the case was until it was over.”

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Q. What was your initial reaction when you spoke with Karen Read for the first time?

A. I knew the case would garner some publicity because a police officer was the alleged victim, but I couldn’t envision what it ultimately became. I was prepared for the news media to be at the arraignment, but beyond that I knew very little about the case.

Q. How did you feel going into the first trial?

A. We were very confident going into the first trial. And to be frank, we were surprised by the hung jury, because we thought we had won the case. Of course, in our view, we did win two of the three charges. We heard from several jurors after the fact who thought they had to return the same verdict on all three indictments, and when they realized they didn’t have to do that, they revealed that all 12 jurors believed [Read] was not guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene after a death.

Q. With all the smoke around the issue of investigatory misconduct, to what extent were you surprised the commonwealth sought to re-try the case?

A. What surprised me the most was how quickly [Norfolk County District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey] made that decision. The problems inherent to the investigation … weren’t problems that could be cured by time or by having a new prosecutor come onto the case. … So, in my view, a prudent district attorney would have at least taken a breath and evaluated what he had and didn’t have.

Instead, the district attorney announced very quickly after the hung jury and mistrial that he would be retrying it, almost in a knee-jerk fashion. This led me to question whether this was about vengeance for how his office was criticized. But I can’t get into his head, and I can’t tell you what his motivations were.

Q. Looking at the entire saga as a whole, what was your biggest challenge or obstacle in handling your client’s defense?

A. Our theory was that somebody hurt John O’Keefe — it just wasn’t Karen Read. And what came with that theory was a criticism of law enforcement that sometimes jurors are reluctant to engage in.

In the first trial, the first words out of my mouth were that Karen Read was framed. At the second trial, we didn’t come out and say those words, but that was still our message. We were very careful to point out that we didn’t have to prove anything; we just had to show that they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Karen did it.

Q. Why do you think this case generated such a massive amount of interest?

A. I think that once it was reported the sort of incestuous relationships that the investigators of this case had with the occupants of that home and their friends and family, and once it was revealed the manner in which some of these witnesses and police witnesses discussed this case, and the things that they said about Karen Read — the derogatory names as well as the evidence that they focused solely on her to the exclusion of any other suspect — I think that led a lot of people to feel like they could have been Karen Read. Particularly women from across Massachusetts, from across the country, and across the world who could envision themselves being in her shoes. I think they felt so personally attacked themselves as a result that they took up this cause.

Q. How did the experience of handling this case compare to other major cases you’ve handled?

A. In 1997, I was in the Middlesex DA’s Office, and I was assigned to prosecute the [kidnapping and murder of 10-year-old] Jeffrey Curley in Cambridge. That case was as high profile as you could get before the internet took off. In those days, newspapers were predominantly the way people got their news outside of nightly local news, and it was front page news. That case almost brought back the death penalty in Massachusetts … and was also broadcast nationally on Court TV and locally on New England Cable News.

But the difference with [the Karen Read] case was the fact that social media and the internet have created a 24-7 news cycle. And so we had both supporters and people who were against us arguing on the internet, keeping this issue alive at all hours of the day. There was news about the case constantly being reported. And that didn’t exist in the Curley case.

The second thing was that it went far beyond the borders of Massachusetts. It’s because of the internet and the reach of the internet that this case really became worldwide news.