Hank Brennan, the prominent defense attorney who was tapped to lead the prosecution team during the retrial of Karen Read, filed paperwork Wednesday to withdraw formally from the high-profile case.
“Undersigned counsel moves to withdraw from the above-docketed matter,” Brennan wrote in a brief motion filed in Norfolk Superior Court. “Undersigned counsel’s position as special prosecutor has concluded.”
Brennan’s motion comes after Read in June was acquitted of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating under the influence, and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death. She was convicted of misdemeanor OUI and received a year’s probation.
Brennan’s firm billed the Norfolk district attorney’s office $566,000 from September 2024, when he first signed on to the case, to the conclusion of the trial in mid-June, records show.
Prosecutors had alleged that Read, 45, backed her SUV in a drunken rage into her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, early on Jan. 29, 2022, after dropping him off outside a Canton home following a night of bar-hopping.
Her lawyers said she was framed and that O’Keefe entered the property, owned at the time by a fellow Boston police officer, where he was fatally beaten before his body was planted on the front lawn.
Read’s first criminal trial ended with a hung jury last summer, and she still faces a wrongful death lawsuit brought by O’Keefe’s family in Plymouth Superior Court.
On Thursday, one of her lawyers in the second criminal trial, Victoria B. George, who had served as an alternate juror in the first trial, also filed a motion to withdraw as an attorney of record in the matter.
George wrote that she informed Read “in writing” on June 23 that “she no longer represents the Defendant and is not involved with her probation proceedings.”
George added that her withdrawal won’t adversely affect Read, who’s “currently represented by other counsel.”
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.