Turtleboy Becomes Official Witness In Karen Read Murder Trial In Defense Motion To Recuse Judge Cannone From Case

Hey Turtleboy, if you are in touch with Karen Read’s legal team you may want to alert them to your reporting on Karl Dugal and his Facebook post as it may pertain to their motion re: the gag order. I read the motion and saw they didn’t include the Dugal post as evidence; it’s unclear if they know about it.

Karl Dugal posted statements of fact about the case online, some of which are provably false (like Karen Read not having a brain tumor) and others of which take a position on the credibility of evidence to be produced at trial (Dugal stating “the fact that Karen Read got drunk, put her full size SUV in reverse, hit my friend at speed and left him incapacitated on the side of the road to die, alone in the cold, like an animal.”) That is not the police’s role. Karl Dugal is a Boston police officer, and nowhere did his post say that it was his opinion and not that of his employer, the Boston Police, thus imbuing it with extra authority. Then, his post was re-posted by Jennifer McCabe as if it was authoritative. McCabe is herself a subject of Read’s third party culpability defense, and used Dugal’s post to drum up support for herself in the public sphere.

Dugal’s posts are yet more evidence that the Commonwealth is asking for a gag order that would in essence apply to Read’s attorneys and her own ability to protect herself in the public opinion but has not, so far, applied to agents of the Commonwealth. Not only does Read have a right to correct the record on false statements already made about her, including statements by the police, she also has a legal duty to mitigate her own damages if she has civil claims of defamation — which can and should include her making public statements to correct the record, through her attorneys, when the allegedly false statements have originally also been made in public.

The fact that Karl Dugal, a Boston Police Officer, misrepresented her medical conditions online among his other statements, stating she lied about her brain tumor, shows further that he operating with a reckless disregard for the truth. Karl Dugal’s post was awful, especially as a BPD officer, and the fact that he was so easily willing to lie about her medical condition, among his other statements, shines a pretty big light on the bias of law enforcement in this case as a whole. Why would he do that – why would Dugal misrepresent Read’s medical conditions online to paint her as a liar? How is it fair that the Commonwealth does not gag its own agents but expects to gag Read’s attorneys — including now after the damage has been done?

Read didn’t get a fair investigation; any observer would consider it a botch job where the police didn’t even go inside the house, didn’t set up a perimeter, didn’t interview witnesses separately, or other policing 101. Now Read is also not getting a fair trial, both because the police are disparaging her in public at all levels to influence the jury pool, from the Commissioner down to Karl Dugal, and this judge Cannone is making really bad calls (asking Read’s attorneys to argue a complex and important motion, on the fly, off the schedule with zero notice? c’mon). The whole thing is really messed up and reduces public confidence in the justice system.