Disgraced former State Police trooper Michael Proctor on Friday sought an emergency order to delay a deposition in a wrongful death suit against Karen Read as public outcry mounts over his newly revealed text messages.
Plymouth Superior Court Judge Mark Gildea ordered Proctor’s lawyers to provide more details about his request by Sunday at 5 p.m., court records show. A hearing on Zoom is set for 8:45 a.m. on Monday.
Proctor is scheduled to be deposed Monday by lawyers for Read, who is fighting a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of her deceased boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe. A jury last year acquitted her of a second-degree murder charge she faced in his death.
Proctor, who was fired by State Police last year, was the lead detective during the investigation into the death of O’Keefe, whose body was found on Jan. 29, 2022, outside a Canton home then owned by another Boston police officer.
Proctor sought to reschedule the deposition a day after Read filed a lawsuit against State Police and the Town of Canton, alleging they hired corrupt and biased police officers.
The complaint included text messages from Proctor and former Canton police sergeant Sean Goode in which they expressed bigoted views of women, Jewish people, the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized groups.
On Friday, the “Today Show” and ABC News aired interviews with Read about the lawsuit.
Proctor’s lawyers did not cite the new litigation in the rescheduling request and Proctor is not a defendant in the lawsuit O’Keefe’s family filed against Read.
In separate litigation pending in federal court, Read is suing Proctor, other State Police investigators, and several prosecution witnesses from her criminal case.
Attorneys for Proctor said he can no longer participate in a deposition on Monday, citing his inability to prepare for questioning due to circumstances they only learned about recently.
Proctor didn’t describe the circumstances, but his lawyers offered to provide more information to Gildea. The attorneys said they also haven’t had time to prepare Proctor for the deposition because of their obligations in unrelated cases.
They wrote that there is still time to reschedule Proctor’s deposition and meet a deadline for preparing evidence.
Prosecutors alleged that Read had backed her SUV into O’Keefe in a drunken rage 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, where he was fatally beaten and possibly mauled by a German Shepherd before his body was planted on the front lawn.
Read’s first criminal trial ended in a hung jury in 2024, and she was acquitted last June at her retrial for second-degree murder. Jurors convicted her of misdemeanor OUI, for which she was placed on probation for a year.
Some of the civilian witnesses who testified against Read at her trials have filed a defamation lawsuit against her and a blogger who supported her. That litigation alleges Read and the blogger falsely implicated them in O’Keefe’s death.
Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi.