A second expert on smartphone forensics testified Wednesday in the Karen Read trial that Jennifer McCabe’s Google search about hypothermia happened after John O’Keefe’s remains were found, not before, as the defense has argued.
Jessica Hyde testified that she could say with scientific certainty that McCabe used her iPhone to search the phrase “hos (sic) long to die in cold” at 6:24 a.m.
The defense claim that the search happened at 2:27 a.m. – hours before investigators say Read, McCabe and Kerry Roberts found O’Keefe dead in the snow at 34 Fairview Road – is incorrect, she testified. The earlier timestamp has no connection to the search but is actually assigned to the time McCabe opened the browser tab on her phone.
That testimony supported earlier testimony from Ian Whiffin, a digital forensic expert from the firm Cellebrite, which makes some of the software and hardware that investigators use to look for information on phones and other devices.
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Hyde testified using specific terms – “hex editors,” “hash values” and database files, wading into technical details about how phone data is extracted, preserved and interpreted. Even inexperienced analysts can have trouble making sense of things, she testified.
David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area defense attorney who has been following the case, questioned the prosecution’s decision to have an expert witness for such technical testimony take the stand before the court’s midday break.
“For an expert, you want them to make it make sense to a 5-year-old,” he told Fox News Digital. “They failed today. Add in that it was an incredibly boring subject, I would bet the jurors were just looking at the clock the whole time thinking what they will order for lunch.”
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After lunch, defense lawyer Robert Alessi handled the cross-examination, bringing up the same technical terms and grilling Hyde about her testimony at Read’s first trial, which he was not part of.
The trial last year ended with a deadlocked jury, leading the state to bring in special prosecutor Hank Brennan to retry the case.
Without the jury present, Alessi asked the court for permission to reference a recent Maryland case that he said showed Hyde was an unreliable witness. Judge Beverly Cannone sided with Brennan’s team and said he could not bring up the judge’s decision in that case, but she said he would be free to cross-examine Hyde on the methodology she used to make her findings.
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Under cross-examination, she testified that O’Keefe’s phone was not secured in alignment with established “best practices” after police recovered it from the scene.
She sparred with Alessi, often using the same technical terms that may have alienated the jury on direct examination, Gelman said.
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“Jurors don’t want to sit through this for days and days,” he said. “They want to get into the meat and potatoes.”
Read has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, manslaughter and fleeing the scene. She could face life in prison if convicted of the top charge.
Massachusetts prosecutors allege she backed her Lexus SUV into and fatally struck O’Keefe before driving away after a night out drinking in Canton, a suburb of Boston.
Through her defense lawyers, she has denied striking him at all.
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Earlier in Wednesday’s proceeding, Massachusetts State Trooper Connor Keefe took the stand to discuss how he collected evidence in the case, including phones from McCabe and Roberts as well as broken pieces of a taillight and O’Keefe’s sneaker from the crime scene.
At one point, he opened an evidence bag in front of the jury, and it had three pieces of broken plastic inside, not the expected two.
“Do you know if the other piece in the bag is a piece that broke off?” Brennan asked. “Do you know how that arrived there?”
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“I do not,” Keefe said.
Brennan asked for the pieces to be moved into evidence, but after an objection from Read’s defense, the court instructed Keefe to place the third piece in a separate evidence bag.
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But Keefe’s testimony helped prosecutors establish a firm timeline of when and where police found broken taillight fragments: in the snow-covered street in front of 34 Fairview Road, where O’Keefe and Read had been seen the night before.
Testimony is expected to resume shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday.
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