This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosseol from Bloomberg Radio.
It's been almost three years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. But that wasn't the endpoint for the anti abortion movement. The next frontier is the battleover fetal personhood. That's according to an expert on the law of reproduction, Mary Ziegler, a professor at UC Davis Law School. Her latest book
is entitled Personhood, the New Civil War over Reproduction. So, Mary, the idea of fetal personhood, I'm not sure I heard about it so much until the last few years, but you write that it's been the goal of the anti abortion movement since the nineteen sixties.
Yeah, that's right, And I think in part you didn't stir about it because the anti abortion movement was fixated on a shorter term, kind of more realistical, which was the reversal of Weighe. So people who saw Row as kind of being the bulls eye weren't wrong. But I think what's become clear in the past few years was that that was never the endgame for the anti worship movement.
They were not going to be content with letting each state set its own policy, and that really is clear when you dig into the history of where the movement came from and what it's been pursuing from the beginning.
Tell us a little bit about that history.
Yeah, so, just to start out with the levels that what fetal person put is is the claim not that just that human life begins when an egg is fertilized, or that when an egg is fertilized you have a separate, unique human being, it's also the claim that when that happens, constitutional rights begin. So initially that argument was kind of
a strategy. So the anti worship movement in the sixties was starting to see states reform their criminal bands, which all dated from the nineteenth century, and arguments that had worked for decades to back up those bands were starting to fail. Arguments like well, if wegalize abortion, people will have sex outside of marriage, or we don't really need to legalize abortion because pregnancy isn't that unsafe anymore. Those
arguments were falling flat. So some anti abortion activists, most of whom were Catholic at the time, began arguing that you just couldn't liberalize abortion laws because it was unconstitutional. But then these arguments kind of took on a life of their own. They became compelling to a range of conservatives,
not just conservative Catholics. They really kind of lasted in the anti abortion movement for more than half a century as a rallying cry, even as I think it's pretty clear today and it was clear in the past, that people in the movement and outside the movement disagree on what it means to value feel life and what you'd have to do to enforce that, like what it would mean on the ground for ivs, for contraception, for abortion, even for pregnancy.
So how do they move together if they don't have a clear definition of what fetal personhood means.
Well, So for a long time, having a clear definition was an advantage, right, because female personhood for a long time was sort of like the moonshot, right, like the sort of dream that united everybody in the movement, and so no one really had to figure out the nitty gritty about what it would mean first a IBF for punishing women for abortion, because no one was going to be able to do any of those things because of ro What we've seen in a way now is that
it's possible that the US Supreme Court could recognize feal person It's possible that state supreme courts could accord fetus's constitutional rights. It's possible that states could fill any clearly enforceable fetal rights. So now all these questions that were wants to sort of like an abstraction for people in the anti abortion movement are now a kind of pressing priority. And that's why we're starting to see more conflict about it.
Right before everybody could kind of table those disagreements and get together and mobilize around the big picture. And that's no underly ef feasible alternative.
More than and I didn't realize this either.
More than a third of the states have fetal personhood laws on the books, and some have been on the books for decades.
Where does that fit in.
It's really unclear what's going to happen with those laws. So how those laws got going for a time was that anti abortion groups thought that they needed to kind of plant the seeds for constitutional fetal rights in areas that didn't have anything to do about abortion, because roe was this stumbling lack. So they began to, for example, focus on fetal homicide laws or laws that allowed wrongful death suits in the case of someone who died in utero.
Right.
So they're all of these strategies that feeded these laws in places that have protections in some instances for legal abortion or IBF were both, but a lot of the time it's sort of unclear how enforceable some of these laws are. Some of them just sound like throat clearing about the value of unborn la some of them are just narrow They apply in a specific legal context but
not outside of it. So one of the really unpredictable things is which of these laws are state courts going to turn into meaningful limits and which are going to just remain kind of symbolic. So last year, when the Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling that essentially halted IVF in that state, the state law had been on the books for a while, right, but no one had really known that the state supreme Court would or could turn it into something that essentially ended yes in the state
for a time. So we're living in a reality now where anti abortion groups are trying to get more of these personhood laws on the books when we already have a lot of personhood laws on the books, and we just don't know how state courts and ultimately federal courts are going to look at them. The endgame there, of course,
is not just a state by state approach either. It's to create a kind of conservative chorus of demands for fetal personhood that anti abortion lawyers can point to in the US Supreme Court, just as they pointed to red state demands to overall row right. So the goal eventually is a federal judicial decision, not a state outcome. But the state outcomes are part of that bigger picture.
Is there disagreement about the legal path to secure fetal personhood or has there been disagreement?
Yeah?
There has I mean I think at the moment there's definitely a focus on the federal judiciary for the unsurprising reason that anti abortion groups have been taking some losses
when it comes to voters. Right, voters have been reluctant to even embrace the bands that are already on the books, much less fetal personhood, which, if you understand it the way abortion opponents have, it could essentially make it unconstitutional for a blue state or swing state or a red state to pass about initiative unreproductive rights or a law
protecting ibs. So abortion opponents, I think are aware that that would not be an easy agenda to sell the voters right now, So there's broad consensus that the only way forward is to rely on the US Supreme Court. There's only five conservative justices you need to persuade to get that outcome versus you know, a majority of American
voters in any state, much less nationwide. So there's consensus there, But once you get beyond that big picture, there's a lot of infighting, and I think we started to see that more and more with each legislative session.
So let's discuss the Dobbs decision, which, for the first time the Court took away a constitutional right and what many see as a flawed opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, particularly with his interpretation of history. Yeah.
Well, one of the really interesting features of Dobbs is, on the one hand, Dobbs doesn't say anything about fetal rights, and that was surprising, right. I think most people were expecting at least one of the justices to reference these theories about fetal rights that abortion opponents had developed and that we're in the Amikus briefs or friend of Court
priests and dogs. On the other hand, the account of history that Justice Alito gives in Dobbs, which is essentially in Justice Alito's version of things, abortion was always criminalized, or at least viewed with disfavor, and that both establishes that there couldn't be a right to abortion in the eyes of personhood proponents. It also suggests that the framers
of the Constitution viewed thetuses as people with constitutional rights. Now, you know, the Court doesn't formally embrace that, but it's easy to see a parallel between the way people who embrace fetal personhood see our past and the way Dobbs portrays our past, which is one of the reasons we've seen I think people get energized about the idea that the Supreme Court may embrace this idea of fetal person had later, even if it's not likely to do so today.
You know, I would say that that's like a far flung theory and the Court won't embrace it. But then I thought that the Court would not get rid of the constitutional right to abortion. I mean, have you seen in the concurrences or the sense of any of the justices this embrace of fetal personhood.
I think Alito did say, correct me.
If I'm wrong in Dabbs something like life begins at conception.
Yeah, I mean it's hard to say. I think you're really tewa freading if you're trying to get a definitive account. I think the problem for the fetal person to movement at the moment in some ways is justice spread Kavanaugh, who wrote a concurrence in Dobbs, more or less committing himself to the position that the Constitution doesn't protect any right having to do with abortion, whether a fetal right
or right for women or anything. Really, and so that doesn't mean Kavanaugh can't change his mind or backpedal, but it's going to take I think time and lots of this sort of state by state work to convince him to change his mind. Having said that, the majority in Dogs, as you point out, relies a lot on the importance
of unborn life. And how that shows up in particular is the court work is accused by the descending justices and some of the parties of threatening other rights like the right to contraception, the right for same sex marriage, rights inter racial marriage, and justice. Alito's response to all of that is abortion is different because it takes potential life or unborn life, which is certainly not a full blown embrace of fetal personhood, but it's also certainly consistent
with the idea of fetal personhood. So again, do I think the Supreme Court's going to embrace fetal personhood tomorrow? No, and neither does anybody in the anti abortion movement. That's
not true. There are definitely people who are pretty in federal court litigating about it, but a lot of them are thinking this is sort of the next great White whale, right, this is the next getting rid of Roby Wade, and it's it's a project that could take a decade or more and obviously might take further transformation of the Supreme Court.
We know Donald Trump will have an opportunity potentially to nominate some justices, but the question will be whether he can actually move the court considerably to the right, or whether instead he'll be replacing some of the most conservative members of the court and kind of firming up the status quo.
Does fetal personhood go hand in hand with criminalization of abortion well in.
The United States today. Yes. One of the interesting questions that sort of drove this fight about personhood was does valuing fetal life or recognizing fetal rights require you to criminalize, you know, abortion, helping people get abortions, IDs, helping people
get ivs, Like, what does that look like? And at various points you would have abortion opponents give the answer that some other countries have given, which is that if you recognize fetal rights, the best way to do that is to give more rights to the person carrying that life, the pregnant woman, right. And the way you would do that would be, for example, to give that person more financial support, access to prenatal care. It's not inevitable to assume that the way you protect life in the womb
is by criminalizing anything. Right. But I think over time, for a whole bunch of reasons, having everything to do with the increase in rates and of incarceration in the US, did the partnership the anti abortion movement formed with the Republican Party. The US anti abortion movement has increasingly equated rights for an unborn child or embryo or fetus with criminalization.
So I think one of the things you learned from the history is one this is a sort of bizarre and uniquely American answer to this question, but also too that there may be other answers to the question. And you see this sometimes even in polling QW in May twenty twenty two, not long before Dobbs, found that a full third of people responding to the poll said they thought life began at conception and fetus, this had rights,
and that abortion shouldn't be criminalized. So even now in the United States, as polarized as we are, there's some Americans who think along those lines, right. So one interesting question is would it be possible to have that kind of dialogue again or are we so kind of mired in this fight about criminalization that there's no way to think or talk like that at the present.
Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue this conversation with You See Davis Law professor Mary Ziegler. We'll talk about the next battleground in the war over abortion. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. I've been talking to Professor Mary Ziegler of You See Davis Law School about her new book entitled Personhood The New Civil.
War over Reproduction.
So let's discuss the Dobbs decision, which for the first time, the court took away a constitutional right and what many see as a flawed opinion by Justice Samuel Leto, particularly with his interpretation of history. Yeah.
Well, one of the interesting features of Dobbs is, on the one hand, Dobbs doesn't say anything about fetal rights, and that was surprising, right. I think most people were expecting at least one of the justices to reference these theories about fetal rights that abortion opponents had developed, and that we're in the Amikus briss Or Friend of Court
Priests and Dobs. On the other hand, the account of history that Justice Alito gives in Dobbs, which is essentially in Justice Alito's version of things, abortion was always criminalized or at least viewed with disfavor, and that both establishes that there couldn't be a right to abortion in the eyes of personhood proponents. It also suggests that the framers
of the Constitution viewed thetuses as people with constitutional rights. Now, you know, the Court doesn't formally embrace that, but it's easy to see a parallel between the way people who embrace fetal personhold see our past and the way Dobbs portrays our past, which is one of the reasons we've seen. I think people get energized about the idea that the Supreme Court may embrace this idea of fetal person had later, even if it's not likely to do so today.
You know, I would say that that's like a far flung theory and the Court won't embrace it. But then I thought that the Court would not get rid of the constitutional right to abortion. I mean, have you seen in the concurrences or the sense of any of the justices this embrace of fetal personhood.
I think Alito did say.
Correct me if I'm wrong in Dabs something like life begins at conception.
Yeah, I mean it's hard to say. I think you're really tewy freading if you're trying to get a definitive account. I think the problem for the fetal Persons of movement at the moment, in some ways is justice spread Kavanaugh, who wrote a concurrence in Dobbs more or less committing himself to the position that the Constitution doesn't protect any right having to do with abortion, whether a fetal right
or right for women or anything. Really, And so that doesn't mean Kavanaugh can't change his mind or backpedal, but it's going to take I think time and lots of this sort of state by state work to convince him to change. Having said that, the majority in Dogs, as you point out, relies a lot on the importance of
unborn life. And how that shows up in particular, is the Court is accused by the descending justices and some of the parties of threatening other rights like the right to contraception, the right for same sex marriage, rights, interracial marriage,
and justice. Alito's response to all of that is abortion is different because it takes potential life or unborn life, which is certainly not a full blown embrace of fetal personhood, but it's also certainly consistent with the idea of fetal personhood. So again, do I think the Supreme Court's going to embrace fetal personhood tomorrow? No, And neither does anybody in
the anti abortion movement. Oh that's not true. There are definitely people who are party in Federal Court litigating about it, but a lot of them are thinking this is sort of the next great white whale, right, this is the next getting rid of Roby Wade, And it's it's a project that could take, you know, a decade or more, and obviously might take further transformation of the Supreme Court.
We know Donald Trump will have an opportunity potentially to nominate some justices, but the question will be whether he can actually move the court considerably to the right or whether instead he'll be replacing some of the most conservative members of the court and kind of firming up the status quo.
Does fetal personhood go hand in hand with criminalization of abortion?
Well in the United States today.
Yes.
One of the interesting questions that sort of drove this fight about personhood was does valuing fetal life or recognizing fetal rights require you to criminalize you know, abortion, helping people get abortions, IDs, helping people get ivs? Like, what
does that look like? And at various points you would have abortion opponents give the answer that some other countries have given, which is that if you recognize fetal rights, the best way to do that is to give more rights to the person carrying that life, the pregnant woman, right. And the way you would do that would be, for example, to give that person more financial support, access to prenatal care.
It's not inevitable to assume that the way you protect life in the womb is by criminalizing anything, right, But I think over time, for a whole bunch of reasons, having everything to do with the increase in rates of incarceration in the US. Did the partnership the anti abortion movement formed with the Republican Party. The US anti abortion movement has increasingly equated rights for an unborn child or
embryo or fetus with criminalization. So I think one of the things you learned from the history is one this is a sort of bizarre and uniquely American answer to this question, but also too that there may be other
answers to the question. And you see this sometimes even in polling QW in May twenty twenty two, not long before Dobbs found that a full third of people responding to the poll said they thought life began a ca inception and fetus's head rights and that abortion shouldn't be criminalized. So even now in the United States, as polarized as we are, there's some Americans who think along those lines, right.
So one interesting question is would it be possible to have that kind of dialogue again or are we so kind of mired in this fight about criminalization that there's no way to think or talk like that at the present.
You mentioned the case in Alabama where people suddenly woke up to the fact that in vitro fertilization was in jeopardy. How does fetal personhood affect in vitro fertilization and contraception.
Yeah, with respect to in vitro fertilization, obviously, the anti abortion movement has become much more outspoken about in vitro fertilization as it's become more outspoken about personhood. Right if you're in the archives of these groups, they've been involved with both a long time that now those I think demands have become more open and more pressing. There's different positions in the been about whether recognizing personhood would require
that IBS be more or less shut down. The majority position is that IVF would have to be radically changed, essentially in a way that would require that only one embryo could be created and implanted at a time, because personhood is inconsistent with either the destruction of embryos or the indefinite preservation of embryos. So that of course would have pretty major impacts on families using IVS. It would
increase its cost, it would decrease its efficacy. It maybe sort of drive IVF under simply by making it so ineffective that it wouldn't have much appeal to families struggling with infertility. The effects on contraception are a little bit different because a lot of groups that believe in personhood
have deep disagreements about how common contraceptives work. They reject the conclusions drawn by groups like ACOG about what defines the pregnancy and about how, for example, emergency contraceptive IDs or even the birth control pill work. So they argue that all of those common contraceptives in fact operate as abortizations, and therefore, to the extent personhood requires us and worship, it also requires us to end access to those common contraceptives.
To me, the numbers were stunning that in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four there are more than a million abortions in the US, and that's some of the highest numbers in a decade.
So how does that equate with.
The end of the constitutional right to abortion?
I think history teaches us that absent really extraordinary circumstances, what tends to drive the abortion beat is not just supply meaning how accessible is abortion, but also demand right. So what is happening in people's lives that they're considering terminating a pregnancy, and that can have any things to do with access to contraception, the health of the economy, inflation,
even at an individual level, people's health outcomes, exposure to racism. Right, people are making these decisions about whether they themselves skill they can have a child or another child given their present reality. So it's unsurprising that states are unable to eliminate demand. They're not necessarily even trying very hard to eliminate demand. There's not been a lot of state provided new resources since dogs. States that said, have mostly outsourced
that task to private religious charities. So I think we're not likely to see that change, and that's borne out by history too. It's very hard to criminalize your way into eliminating a phenomenon, whether that's abortion or drinking alcohol. I think usually more needs to be done to even make any kind of significant difference if that's what your goal is.
What do you think the next big fight is for abortion opponents? Is it the Commps Stock Act, is it shield laws or is it something different?
Yeah, I think the most likely short term battle is probably going to be over Sheila's And the reason I say that is because what the anti abortion movement would like before fetal personhood. What it would like first from President Trump is judges who would be sympathetic to fetal personhood. Donald Trump has four years to transform the federal courts again and to put more people on the courts like Matthew Pasmerrick, who's already needed coded references to personhood and
his opinions. The second thing they want in the short term would be some kind of federal limit on abortion, like the interpretation of the Compstock Act as a band or a change in the rules governing access to with a pristone. But you know, we're past one hundred daymark of the Trump administration, and while we have no idea necessarily what's coming next, Trump has been moving at a breakneck speed on his other priorities and has not done much on abortion. So I think we're starting to see
anti abortion groups look for other ways forward. And one of the things I think they're trying to do by attacking shie laws is to create a precedent where red states can project their power across state lines, even if the Trump administration is not ready to have some kind of top down mandate that would shut down access in blue states.
Finally, Mary, what was your main goal in writing the book? What do you hope people will get from reading it?
Well? I think in part I was reacting to the fact that people seem to think that it was over after Dobbs, at least for the anti abortion side, and the fight was going to be a fight about when and whether reproductive rights were going to come back at
the national level. And I think people fundamentally misunderstood that the fight wasn't over for conservatives either, and that reproductive rights could be much more restricted than they currently are, and to understand that if that happened, it would have implications not just for people who are abortion seekers, but for lots of other people too. So to kind of help people to understand where are we really now that Roe is gone? And the answer is, you know, we
don't know. But it's not necessarily going to be a path toward the restoration of something like Roe. It could very much go in the other direction, particularly with Donald Trump's judges taking seats in sports across the country. So I think waking people up to that reality and showing them that that reality would have stakes for them, even if they don't anticipate ever wanting an abortion or even being willing to have an abortion.
It's always important to see the whole picture, and I think your book helps us do that. Thanks so much for joining me. Mary. That's Professor Mary Ziegler of UC Davis Law School. Once again, her book is Personhood, the New Civil War over reproduction. Perhaps it's the public's fascination with true crime and conspiracy theories that's made Karen Reid's second murder trial must see viewing. Reid's first trial was twenty nine days of testimony inside and outside the courtroom.
A Boston police officer killed during a blizzard and left to die in the snow with no eye witnesses his girlfriend, a well to do white female, charged with murder, the defense allegations of an extensive frame up and a police cover up, and finally the jury deadlocked and unable to reach a verdict. Her second trial promises to be more of the same, although this time the prosecution called the victim's mother Peggy o'keef.
He's bruised up, his eyes were closed.
She recalled Karen Reid, shouting at her in the hospital hallway.
Peg is he dead? As he did? Peg?
Peg?
Is he did?
Joining me? His trial attorney David Ring, a partner at Tailor and Ring Dave. The first time around, the trial judge declared a mistrial after the jury said it was deadlocked. Never asked them why they were hung up, but several jurors reached out to defense attorneys tell us what has so.
In the first trial, Karen Reid was charged with three counts, the most serious being the second degree murder, and then the next, also very serious, was vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and the third count was leaving the scene of a serious injury. Well after several days of deliberations that the jurors had sent several notes to the judge saying they had had an impasse, and so finally, when it became clear they couldn't reach a verdict, the judge declared a mistrial.
The only problem with that was neither the judge or the defense attorneys said, hey, had you reached a verdict on any of the three counts. They just assumed that they meant they had an impass on all three counts. So, after this mistrial was declared, some of the jurors came forward and told the defense attorney that the jury had in fact acquitted Karen Reid of second degree murder and of leaving the scene of a serious injury. They had taken those verdicts in court, she wouldn't be facing those
same charges again in her second trial. And so the defense from the last few months has tried to get some court to listen to that argument, and they've been unsuccessful each and every time. Why because those verdicts were never announced in open court.
Yeah.
So Reid even found a petition with the US Supreme Court arguing that a second trial on those counts, the jury had reached a unanimous but unannounced verdict of acquittal should be barred by the double jeopardy clause. But the court turned her down. It seemed like a real reach to me, basing it on what happened in the jury room that wasn't announced in the court room when you're not supposed to delve into jury deliberations.
That's exactly right, and that's why they were unsuccessful. And there are several appeals to try to have this double jeopardy argument heard by a court. Look, if the judge in the first trial had said, hey, jury, have you reached a verdict on any of the three counts, the jury would have said, yes, we have, and then it would have been announced in court and now she'd only
be facing one count of vehicular manslaughter. But because that did not happen, she's facing a second degree murder charge along with the vehicular manslaughter.
The second trial compared to the first, what does a retrial mean?
Usually?
I think that a retrial favors the prosecution because you know what the defense is going to be. But this case is so different. Does one side have an upper hand on a retrial?
Well, boy, you know, I agree with you that generally speaking, a second trial generally favors the prosecution for that exact reason, because there's no surprises, and the prosecution knows maybe where they can improve from the first trial. They've seen all the witnesses, they've probably talked to some of the jurors said Okay, why weren't you convinced beyond a reasonable doubt?
And they fix all that for the second trial. In this particular case, it is going to be very interesting because both sides have some very compelling evidence and arguments that favor their respective positions, and I'm not sure that's going to change at all in the second trial. I'm not sure it can change at all, and it very well could be we end up with another jury that's reaching them pass and can't make a decision. But time will tell.
What do you know that the prosecution and the defense have the second time around that they didn't have the first time around.
Well, a couple things, And one of the most important things for the prosecution is they have a new prosecutor. And I think it's fair to say that in the first trial the prosecutor was underwhelming, to say the least. He just was not charismatic and he did not put together a coherent, compelling case we've already seen. In this second trial, they brought in a special prosecutor. He's really a defense attorney. They brought him in specifically to try
this second trial. They're allowed to do that names Hank Brennan, and you can tell already he knows how to put on a compelling case and he's doing it in a very very compelling manner as to how he's presented witnesses
so far. The other important thing that's going to be different in this second case is that this judge has curtailed or limited some of the evidence that the defense was able to put forward in the first trial, and one of the most significant ones is the defense kind of pointed the finger at some of these other people in the house, saying, hey, these people had a motive for perhaps getting in a fight and even killing John O'Keeffe.
And the judge has already spent one of those people aside, say you can't point the finger at that person, there's no evidence of that, and very well may do it for some others, which you know, that was a big part of the defense arguments in the first case, was pointing the finger at some of these people who lived in the home, and John O'Keefe was found in the snow dead outside of that home.
Something that I've never heard of before.
But one of the jurors from the first trial was a lawyer, and she's now on the defense team.
She's not a criminal lawyer. It just strikes me as odd, very odd.
I mean, this case has it all, it really does. You have a juror from trial on who now is working for the defense team on trial too. I'm not sure I've seen that before ever, So that's highly unusual. And let's face that Karen Reid has assembled a very very impressive defense team. Alan Jackson's one of the finest criminal defense lawyers in the nation, and he did a fabulous job in the first trial. I'm sure he'll do a fabulous job in this second trial. She also just
has a team of lawyers. They come into the court room. It's like a small law It's pretty amazing. But she certainly not hurting for having legal help in this second trial.
And we can expect the defense to once again attack former state trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired.
And that was a huge part of I think why we saw a jury unable to reach a decision because the lead investigator, whose name is Michael Proctor, engaged in serious misconduct in the course of this investigation. You know, he texted some very vulgar comments about Karen Reed to other police officers and to his friends and really showed a bias against her, you know, a bias in investigating her. And the defense seized on that and said this was a biased investigation from the start. So jump ahead, now
we're in the second trial. Well, Michael Proctor has been fired from his position as a Massachusetts State police But again I think the prosecution, they're stuck with him. They're going to have to put him on the stand, and they're going to have to do whatever they can to try to limit his bad behavior and somehow try to uphold his investigation by saying, hey, his investigation was legitimate. All these comments he made about Karen Reid, he's been punished for those.
I confess that I didn't follow the first case very closely. So the defense has argued that someone else killed O'Keefe during a party at a fellow officer's house and dumped him outside, and that Reid has been framed in this widespread conspiracy among law enforcement officers from different agencies, paramedics, the homeowners, the after party.
Guess.
I mean, for the jury to believe that she didn't do this, do they have to believe that there's such a widespread conspiracy to frame her.
They don't have to believe that. They don't have to believe that there's a conspiracy to frame her. But that is the centerpiece of the defense case, and parts of it are very compelling. I mean, there's some very very strange things that took place in the investigation of this incident. Once John O'Keefe was found in the snow, and yes, there's law enforcement lived in the house. They were having
an after party there. Karen Reid and John O'Keeffe pulled up to the house, and what happens at that point going forward is hotly in dispute. The prosecution's position is that Karen Reid and O'Keefe were in an argument. Karen Reid was very drunk and when O'Keefe got out of the car, she was so mad at him she backed into him, knocked him unconscious, and he laid out in the snow. She left the scene and he never woke up,
and he died out there in the snow. The defense position, on the other hand, is that they may have been in a fight, but reed left. John O'Keeffe went into that house and was in that house for some period of time that something happened in that house. There was a fight or something, and he was killed and then he was dumped out in the snow in the front yard. And I know that sounds like a wild theory, but
it worked in the first trial. And there's actually some testimony and evidence where it's an eyebrow raiser, like something weird's going on here. So it's going to be interesting how this second trial plays out.
Tell me what you think the strongest evidence for the prosecution is and the strongest evidence for the defense.
The strongest evidence for the prosecution is Karen Reid's blood alcohol level, which was very high, and by her own admissions, she drank a lot that night. The relationship between her and O'Keefe was deteriorating, and there's evidence that the rear of her SUV there's a broken tail light, and there's a lot of evidence that she backed into him, knocking him down, knocking him unconscious, and that he never got up because of the snow and the cold weather, and
he died a hypothermia and of his injuries. There's a lot of evidence of that. But for the defense, there's also some compelling evidence because of Michael Proctor and his absolutely unprofessional investigation and his bias comments throughout the investigation, and also the conduct of these other law enforcement officers who were at this party and who lived in this house. They never came out to give an interview. They said
that O'Keeffe never stepped foot in the house. There's a lot of really suspicious things that took place that make one perhaps have reasonable doubt about Reed's guilt.
It sounds a little like the OJ Simpson defense, you know, the sloppy police work and the investigator is biased against him.
Well, it does, And you know what, I think everyone who watched the first trial will agree that there was sloppy police work, that some of the investigation was below par, and that hurt the prosecution's case. And I think they also agree that there's some evidence that just causes one to say, we're not getting the whole story here. Something doesn't quite add up. And so again, this is an
incidant without any witnesses. There's no one there's no video, there's no eyewitness who saw what happened outside that home that night. There's no one that can say for sure that, hey, this car back to o'keef and hit him. There's no one that can say that. It's all based upon forensic evidence and digital evidence and iPhone evidence and things like that. And on the other hand, there's really no compelling or eyewitness testimony that o'keef went into the house and that
something happened in there. It's all kind of speculation and conspiracy theories. That's what makes this case so fascinating.
There are also from Reid that the prosecution is going to use against her.
Here's what Karen Reid may regret having done in the past few months. Karen Reid did not testify at her first trial, nor did she have to. She has every right not to take the stand, and she didn't. In the meantime, little did we know, she was assisting in the filming of a documentary that's now been out on Max called A Body in the Snow, where she gave extensive interviews about what happened that night, at least her
version of what happened, and all sorts of things. And since this trial, and she's given a lot of other interviews to a lot of media outlets. So in this second trial, the prosecution has ceased upon some of those interviews and some of the statements she made in those interviews that don't necessarily help her, and they've been able to play those snippets to this jury. And so I think so far that's actually hurt Karen Reid, the fact that she decided to talk to the media and some
of the things she said don't help her cause. And I think that may come back to haunt her in this second trial.
And just tell us about some of the things that give you pause and might give a juror pause about her guilt.
There's things that just don't add up, Like he's got all these scratches on his arm, and the defenses that's from the dog bite the dog in the house, bid him. Then mysteriously the owners of the dog in the house they get rid of the dog. And these phone calls between the people that were in the house that night, like four in the morning, and this and that, and you know, some of them have gone to their own houses.
So there's these phone calls back and forth, and Alan Jackson was you know, got all these cell phone regor Why why'd you call him at four in the morning, Oh, that was a butt dial. Why did you call him back at four oh one in the morning, Well that was a butt dial too, And so there's all these little things like that that add up that had this jury saying, you know, we're not quite sure what happened, so we're not going to convict her.
You can never tell what will be important to a jury.
Thanks so much, Dave.
That's trial attorney David Ring of Taylor and Ring. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot bloomberg dot com, slash podcast slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm.
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