Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey remains on the hot seat in the Karen Reed murder case

Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey remains on the hot seat as Karen Reid Defense Team claims he used his personal cell phone and email to communicate with the court and witnesses in the case.

Defense attorney David Yannetti said he learned Morrissey’s text messages were “in some strange way set to automatically delete after 30 days,” raising concerns about what prosecutors may be hiding.

“This obviously raises some questions for us, maybe that will be the subject of a future submission, but more of a concern is that every day we lose text messages from 30 days ago,” Yannetti said at the end hearing in Norfolk Superior Court last week.

Reid’s defense team filed a motion in early November to check Morrissey’s personal email and mobile phone for any reference to their client’s case, saying they had evidence he had made inappropriate communications.

Yannetti expanded the request last Tuesday, saying they would like to search Morrissey’s personal iCloud email for references to “Read” and “Reed,” the names of relevant witnesses, all judges involved in the case and staff in Stoughton’s office. Norfolk County Court and Superior Court.

“We don’t know if he did that to avoid a Freedom of Information request or if he just misspelled my client’s name,” Yannetti said of Morrissey spelling his client’s last name “Reed.”

“We have reason to distrust Mr. Morrissey in light of his actions using this personal email account for ex parte communications,” Yannetti added, “and we are requesting a more thorough search of these types of communications.”

According to “documentary evidence,” the defense took exception to Morrissey’s ex parte communications with Stoughton Circuit Court staff and judges.

Morrissey’s use of a personal cell phone and email attracted attention during the witness intimidation case. Aidan “Turtle” Kearney.

The Holden-based journalist has covered Reid’s case extensively on his blogs and social media accounts intensively read the perspective, and he was accused of intimidation of witnesses in Reid’s case, for her own good.

Reed’s defense team requested access to Morrissey’s personal cell phone and email after Kearney’s attorney, Mark Bederow, filed a similar motion in October.

Bederow alleged that Morrissey used his personal email address to punish Stoughton County District Court for “leaking” information about the public proceeding against Kearney to the defendant, and that his messages included screenshots of text messages from a prosecution witness in the Reed case, as well as other information about the fact that more than one witness communicated with the prosecution.

It is a violation of state law for government employees to use private emails for government business.

In a blog post on November 19Kearney highlighted how his defense team filed another motion in Norfolk Superior Court, specifically seeking “access to Morrissey’s private email account that he used to communicate with ex parte judges regarding Turtleboy’s activity on September 29, 2023.”

“It is clear from the reports that Stoughton Court is directly involved in the release of information affecting our murder prosecution,” Morrissey wrote in an email that day to Stacey Fortes, the presiding judge of the Massachusetts District Court. Kearney included a screenshot of the message in his post.

“You can see from the comments of one of the witnesses that they have clearly lost all confidence in the Commonwealth courts,” Morrissey continued. “I have to agree that these actions undermine trust and integrity between the courts and the public, as well as the relationship with the district attorney’s office.”

Kearney posted on his page on Friday account X that the court “withheld the “inconvenient” e-mails. (Morrissey) regularly used this account to email dozens of judges about court cases. He even mocked the trial courts and their effectiveness in one email.”

Also Friday, Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannon, who is handling the case in Red’s murder, denied the prosecutor’s office’s request for her parents’ phone records, which they said could bolster their argument that the defendant knew she hit and left John O’Keefe to die during the snowstorm.

Reed, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while operating while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident causing death in the early morning shooting of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, on January 29, 2022.

Prosecutors say she hit O’Keefe with her SUV after another drunken fight in a dysfunctional relationship and left him to freeze to death in the front yard of a Canton home where the couple was supposed to continue their evening after the bars closed.

The defense denies that O’Keefe entered the home and was killed by other people, including possibly the home’s then-owner, Brian Albert, who was one of the Boston police officers. It alleges that a well-connected police family worked with local and state police investigators to cover up the crime and frame Reed.

Read The first trial ended in a hung jury in July The defense and the prosecution asked to postpone the retrial scheduled for the end of January to April.

Morrissey received backlash after he blasted internet trolls in August 2023 video for spreading “baseless” theories in the case.