As I stood on the sidewalk outside 34 Fairview Road, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong. The two-story house was dark blue with brick lining the ground level. A white Mazda sat in the driveway. The spacious front lawn was browning, evidence of the snowbanks that once lined the curb. Perhaps the most important detail was a bare flagpole on the left corner closest to the street. Not a sound left the peaceful-looking home on this Wednesday morning in Canton. The quaint, unassuming drive wouldn’t turn a passerby’s head, but to me, the scene was riveting.

 In the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022, 34 Fairview was anything but peaceful. Sirens echoed through the falling snow, and drunken partygoers clawed at the scraps of their memories to piece together the night. At 4 a.m., Karen Read awoke in a haze. Her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, was missing. She called two friends from the night before, and they set out to look for him. In the midst of a New England blizzard, they returned to where they had left him just hours earlier. Read leapt from the car and ran to O’Keefe’s body, lying in a snowbank next to the flagpole. With a broken taillight on her car and angry voicemails she’d left O’Keefe the night before, Read was charged with second-degree murder of O’Keefe.

 Now, almost three and a half years later, I stood where O’Keefe once lay. I couldn’t help but question whether my presence was invasive. The homeowner, Brian Albert, who had invited Read and O’Keefe to the party that night, has since sold the house. Had O’Keefe never died, I might have heard the bark of the Alberts’ German shepherd, Chloe. But Chloe was sent to Vermont soon after the incident. That, along with scratches on John’s arm, supported the defense’s claim that he hadn’t been struck by Karen’s car but had been attacked by the people inside the house and left to die in the cold. Details such as a 2 a.m. Google search from inside the house (“hos [sic] long to die in the cold”) corroborated their argument. Oh, and that Brian Higgins, another partygoer, destroyed his phone at a military base just months after the events.

“People glorify these grave trials like sporting events. They create hashtags, line streets and send death threats, affecting our justice system. It sways juries. It makes people fall in love with accused murderers.”

 So, did Karen Read drunkenly back into O’Keefe in a fit of rage? Or was it something deeper? Honestly, I don’t know. Neither did the jury in her 2024 trial. As many murder trials go, this one was messy. Text messages, testimony, conflicting narratives: The whole thing was a tangle. The defense claimed that O’Keefe was killed by someone at the party and that the Canton Police Department framed Read. This was fueled by the public’s perception of police misconduct.

 Public attention exploded when Aidan Kearney, known as “Turtleboy” to his Twitch stream, became Read’s biggest advocate. Soon, the “Free Karen Read” slogan took the internet by storm. Each day, pink-clad (Karen’s favorite color) supporters lined the courtroom steps holding signs and chanting, “Free Karen Read.” Their voices echoed through the courthouse as the jury deliberated.

 Public opinion plays a powerful role in the courtroom. Remember O.J.? Although there was significant evidence suggesting Simpson had murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, the trial occurred shortly after the Rodney King beating and the LA riots. Public anger over police brutality and racial injustice influenced how people interpreted the case. The trial became less about guilt or innocence and more about racial tensions and systemic bias. When Simpson was acquitted, crowds ran through the streets, screaming and crying with jubilation. The verdict was a rare victory against a biased system.

 Soon after, the same district attorney, Gil Garcetti, prosecuted the Menendez brothers, who were accused of killing their wealthy parents. The public adored the Menendezes: two clean-cut young men claiming abuse. Their emotional testimonies led to a hung jury in the first trial. However, Garcetti banned cameras from the courtroom during the retrial. Without the media spectacle, the second jury quickly sentenced them to life without parole.

 People glorify these grave trials like sporting events. They create hashtags, line streets and send death threats, affecting our justice system. It sways juries. It makes people fall in love with accused murderers. So, maybe I, standing here at 34 Fairview, was unethical. But I also think public pressure is necessary for change. The public outcry after Rodney King’s beating forced the nation to confront police violence in a way that couldn’t be ignored. These trials of individual defendants have served to bring attention to broader societal issues, such as racism and police conduct, and though they have had the fallout of influencing individual verdicts, it may be worth it.