Karen Read's Defense Team Could Pull From a List of 91 Potential Witnesses — That's a Lot

When it comes to a second criminal trial, the prosecution tends to get the better end of the deal. The defense is usually forced to make a few changes if the judge won't allow things from the first trial into the next. For example, after the initial trial for the Menendez brothers ended in hung juries for both, Judge Weisman pared down the witness list, which impacted the defense's argument about the alleged sexual abuse by Jose Menendez.

Decades later, another retrial was thrust into the spotlight due to the controversy surrounding it. Karen Read has been accused of murdering her boyfriend, a Boston police officer named John O'Keefe. The details of that night differ depending on who you ask. Read's legal team is arguing that she is being set up by several members of law enforcement, while the state says it was a hit-and-run. The potential witness list for her defense trial includes a few new names. Here's what we know.

According to NBC Boston, Read's legal team submitted a list of 91 possible witnesses, most of whom those familiar with the trial will recognize. On the night O'Keefe died, he and Read were bar-hopping and then heading to the home of Brian Albert, a retired Boston police officer. He and his wife Nicole, along with other members of their family, could be called to testify. Brian testified the first time and said that O'Keefe never actually made it into his home. Read claimed he did.

Another polarizing figure from Read's first trial is Brian Higgins, whose flirty text messages with Read were included in his testimony during the first trial. They spent weeks exchanging texts that vacillated between cute and confusing, as Read complained about her relationship with O'Keefe to Higgins. He was at Brian and Nicole's house the night O'Keefe died.

Speaking of cell phone use, both Jennifer McCabe and Trooper Michael Proctor could return to the stand. McCabe was at the Albert house the night O'Keefe died, and she was the one who searched "hos long to die in cold," which was used by Read's defense team to support their argument that he was left in the cold by someone in the Albert house. Proctor was grilled by the defense team over inappropriate texts he sent about Read, which included noting he couldn't find naked photos of her on her phone.

Not only is Matthew DiSogra a new witness in Read's trial, but was the first called to the stand by the defense, per NBC Boston. DiSogra is a director of engineering at DELTA |v|, an accident reconstruction firm. He joined their team in 2013 and has an MS in Mechanical Engineering from UNC Charlotte. The engineer will probably be asked about Read's vehicle, which the state claims she used to run her then-boyfriend over.

Before the commonwealth rested its case, it played a clip that was used in an Investigation Discovery documentary about Read. In it she is heard asking, "So I thought, could I have run him over? Did he try to get me as I was leaving, and I didn't know it?" She goes on to describe a scenario in which the blizzard, coupled with her loud music and windshield wipers, could have prevented Read from realizing she hit O'Keefe. In the documentary, Read's lawyer said that would mean she has some culpability.