Commonwealth v. Read — Trial Archive
Trial 2 Trial Day
◀ Day 18 Trial 2 Day 20 ▶

Day 19 - May 20, 2025

Judge Beverly J. Cannone · Trial 2 · 5 proceedings · 1,770 utterances

Day 19 of 36
Appearing:
🏛️ Adam Lally 🏛️ Hank Brennan 🛡️ Robert Alessi 🔬 Shanon Burgess 🔬 Christina Hanley

The Burgess examination concludes in a credibility battle over a fictitious degree on a federal court filing, before forensic glass analyst Christina Hanley begins testimony linking scene glass to a broken drinking cup.

Full day summary

Day 19 opened with Robert Alessi completing his cross-examination of digital forensics expert Shanon Burgess, establishing that five timeline slides contained wrong dates and that Burgess's methodology switch to a three-point-turn synchronization anchor was the only approach capable of placing the TechStream event after O'Keefe's last phone interaction. Hank Brennan's redirect rehabilitated Burgess on his credentials and walked through a point-by-point rebuttal of defense expert Dogra's clock variance analysis. Alessi's recross introduced a federal court CV filing from a Texas case listing a nonexistent degree without a 'currently pursuing' qualifier, directly contradicting Burgess's redirect testimony that his credentials had never been misrepresented in court. Brennan's re-redirect attempted to neutralize the damage by establishing that Burgess had not personally filed the Texas document. The court then heard the opening of Christina Hanley's direct examination, in which she presented glass comparison results finding a physical match between glass at 34 Fairview Road and a broken drinking glass from the scene, while finding no physical match between the defendant's vehicle bumper glass and either.

Key Moments
  • Alessi establishes that Burgess's three-point-turn synchronization method was the only approach that could place the TechStream backing event after O'Keefe's last phone interaction, arguing confirmation bias.
  • Burgess concedes on recross that an incorrect statement about his educational credentials — a nonexistent degree — was filed in federal court, contradicting his redirect testimony.
  • Alessi demonstrates that Burgess knew how to write 'currently pursuing' on CVs filed in the Karen Read case but omitted it in the Texas federal filing.
  • Brennan counters Dogra's clock variance analysis through Burgess, arguing Dogra's call logs compared two iPhones rather than the Lexus infotainment clock to O'Keefe's phone.
  • Hanley testifies that six glass pieces from 34 Fairview Road physically matched the broken drinking glass recovered from the scene, but bumper glass from the defendant's vehicle did not match.
Notable Quotes
Robert Alessi
“Choosing the three-point turn as the independent data source is the only way you could ever get the text stream event to even possibly occur after the lock event on Mr. O'Keefe's phone. Correct.”
Alessi's core confirmation bias argument — framing Burgess's entire May 8 methodology as reverse-engineered to reach a predetermined conclusion — is the defining attack of the day's extended Burgess examination.
Shanon Burgess
“Correct. Yes, it was.”
Burgess's concession that an incorrect credential statement was filed in federal court directly undercuts his redirect testimony and lands as the sharpest credibility blow of the day.
Christina Hanley
“there were, I believe, six pieces of glass from item 7-12 that fit mechanically to the cup that was also recovered from the road, item 3-2.”
Hanley's physical match finding — linking six scene glass fragments to the broken drinking cup — marks the day's transition from contested expert impeachment to new physical evidence.

Shanon Burgess - Redirect

Prosecution rehabilitates Burgess on redirect, addressing credential criticism and defending his clock synchronization methodology over defense expert Dogra's approach.

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Redirect
Shanon Burgess Hank Brennan
681 utt.

Hank Brennan conducted redirect examination of digital forensics expert Shanon Burgess, addressing three areas raised during cross-examination. First, Brennan established that while Burgess's LinkedIn and Aperture website incorrectly listed a bachelor's degree, his actual CVs filed with the court in October 2024 and April 2025 accurately stated 'currently pursuing,' and that Burgess had never misrepresented his credentials in any court testimony. Second, Brennan showed that Burgess independently identified and corrected his megabytes/megabits error in a supplemental protocol on October 17, 2024 — before receiving any information from defense expert Dogra on November 7, 2024. Third, Brennan walked Burgess through Dogra's entire March 2025 report page by page, with Burgess explaining that Dogra's clock variance analysis was flawed because it relied on call logs recorded when the Lexus was powered off (comparing iPhone-to-iPhone rather than iPhone-to-infotainment) and misidentified GPS point 154 as the end of the three-point turn when it actually occurred before the turn began. Burgess reaffirmed his 21-to-29-second variance and that the last user interaction on O'Keefe's phone at 12:32:09 fell within the adjusted Techstream backing maneuver window of 12:32:04 to 12:32:12.

Shanon Burgess - Cross (Part 2)

Defense attorney Alessi continues cross-examining digital forensics expert Shanon Burgess, challenging his timeline accuracy, methodology choices, and the significance of TechStream trigger events.

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Cross
Shanon Burgess Robert Alessi
723 utt.

Robert Alessi continued his cross-examination of Shanon Burgess, focusing on three areas. First, Alessi showed that five timeline slides in Burgess's presentation listed the wrong date (January 29 vs. January 30). Second, Alessi challenged Burgess's May 8 supplemental report methodology, arguing that Burgess abandoned discrete call-log clock variance data in favor of an approximate three-point turn synchronization — the only method that could place the TechStream event 11622 after the last user interaction on O'Keefe's phone — and accused Burgess of confirmation bias. Alessi introduced defense expert Dogra's chart (Exhibit 190) showing that under all call-log variance calculations, the TechStream event occurred before O'Keefe's phone lock event. Third, Alessi established that TechStream trigger events do not inherently indicate collisions, that approximately 30 triggers occurred in 8 months of vehicle ownership, and that the 11621 trigger was merely a three-point turn. Alessi also revisited Burgess's criticism of Maggie Gaffney's chip-off work, noting that Berla software support for the micro SD card did not exist at the time of her extraction.

Shanon Burgess - Redirect/Recross

Expert witness Shanon Burgess faces defense recross on educational credentials, followed by prosecution re-redirect rehabilitating his credibility.

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Recross
Shanon Burgess Robert Alessi
160 utt.

Robert Alessi conducted recross-examination of Shanon Burgess focused entirely on impeaching his earlier testimony that no court filing had ever misrepresented his educational background. Alessi introduced Exhibits EE and FF — filings from a federal case in the Eastern District of Texas (Glover v. Graphic Packaging International) — which contained Burgess's CV listing a 'Bachelor of General Science in Mathematics and Business Administration, University of Alabama-Birmingham, Alabama, 2024,' filed in 2023 without any 'currently pursuing' qualifier. Burgess acknowledged that the degree listed does not exist (BGS stands for Bachelor of General Studies, not General Science), that the filing contained no indication the degree had not been obtained, and that an incorrect statement about his educational background was indeed filed in federal court. Alessi contrasted this with the CVs filed in the Karen Read case (Exhibits 183 and 184), which did include 'currently pursuing,' establishing that Burgess knew how to properly disclose his degree status but failed to do so in the Texas filing.

Redirect
Shanon Burgess Hank Brennan
31 utt.

Hank Brennan's re-redirect focused entirely on rehabilitating Shanon Burgess after Alessi's recross impeachment regarding the Texas federal court filing. Brennan established that Burgess did not submit the document to the federal court himself and had never seen it before it was filed on his behalf. Brennan elicited that since the document listed a 2024 degree date but was filed in 2023, Burgess's expectation at the time was that he would complete his degree in 2024, and when he did not, he updated his CV to read 'currently pursuing.' Burgess maintained he never represented to any court that he held a degree he had not earned. Two prosecution questions were sustained on objection, including an attempt to argue the CV issue was irrelevant to Burgess's data opinions.

+1 procedural segment

Christina Hanley - Direct (Part 1)

Christina Hanley testifies about her qualifications and begins describing her glass comparison analysis of evidence from the scene and the defendant's vehicle.

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Direct
Christina Hanley Adam Lally
167 utt.

Christina Hanley, a forensic scientist 3 and unit supervisor at the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab's Trace Arson and Explosives Unit, was sworn in and qualified through her education, training, and proficiency testing. ADA Lally walked her through the lab's accreditation, her analytical methods (stereomicroscopy, polarized light microscopy, GRIM refractive index measurement, FTIR), and contamination prevention protocols. Hanley then identified the glass evidence items she examined: a broken drinking glass (3-2), five glass pieces from the defendant's vehicle bumper (3-3, labeled A-E), nine glass pieces from 34 Fairview Road (7-12), and one glass piece from the road (7-14). She began describing her comparison results — six pieces from item 7-12 physically matched the drinking glass, but no physical match was found between the bumper glass and the road/cup glass. The court adjourned before she completed her testimony.

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