At the very end of the Karen Read murder trial late Friday afternoon, there was a very interesting exchange in the cross-examination between prosecution witness Brian Higgins, the ATF agent who destroyed his cell phone after “curating” what he wanted the State Police to see, and Karen Read’s defense attorney Alan Jackson.
This questioning has been overshadowed in the media by the spicy text messages, which weren’t really material to the charges. But it’s worth checking out.
We’ll be playing some of this cross-examination on the show in the coming days.
Jackson begins by asking the bloated drunkard Higgins how he refused to turn over his cellphone to the prosecutors.
Instead Higgins “extracted” the information he wanted to hand over and then trashed his phone, just the way BPD officer Brian Albert also testified he did with his after fellow BPD officer John O’Keefe was found dead on his front lawn in Canton.
Jackson asked Higgins if he could have just turned over the entire phone to the MSP.
HIGGINS: “I guess that was an option, yes.”
Not an option Higgins was interested in, though. What do you suppose he was trying to conceal? Jackson then asked the bent fed what remained on his phone after his fellow hack ATF agent “walked him through” how to make sure the local cops couldn’t obtain any evidence he didn’t want them to see.
JACKSON: “Any other information would still be on your phone ending in 5421, correct?”
HIGGINS: “Well, that information stayed on my phone. I just took those strings off and provided them to the Mass. State Police.”
JACKSON: “So where’s your phone?”
HIGGINS: “I do not have that phone anymore.”
JACKSON: “You’ve destroyed that phone, haven’t you?”
HIGGINS: “No, I threw the phone away.”
JACKSON: “Well, that’s destroying the phone, isn’t it?”
HIGGINS: “I had every right to do that.”
JACKSON: “I didn’t ask you about your ‘rights.’ I asked you what you did.”
HACK PROSECUTOR: Objection.
HACK JUDGE: Sustained.
HIGGINS: “You destroyed that phone by removing the SIM card, right?”
HACK PROSECUTOR: Objection.
HACK JUDGE: Sustained.
JACKSON: “Did you pull the SIM card out?”
HACK PROSECUTOR: Objection.
HACK JUDGE: “Did you pull the SIM card out of your phone?”
HIGGINS: “Honor, Your Honor, to the best of my recollection if I if I did take the SIM card out I would have – If I was gonna, when I threw it away if I was gonna take it out, I would break it or cut it but I did not wipe the phone. I did not take anything else off it but if I was gonna throw the phone away that’s what I would have done.”
JACKSON: “When you pull the SIM card out and break it and then throw that SIM card away you don’t need to wipe it…..
JACKSON: “You were aware that there was a court order that you not alter, delete or destroy or in any way manipulate your phone or the electronic data associated with it? Correct?”
HACK PROSECUTOR: Objection….
HIGGINS: “I was served an order, yes, that’s correct.”
JACKSON: “Did you destroy that phone in October?”
HACK PROSECUTOR: Objection.
Hack judge asks follow up question to Higgins about destroying the phone he owned the night John O’Keefe died. Did he or did he not?
HIGGINS: “I, it’s possible that I did. I believe that’s how I’ve testified, yes. It‘s possible that if I took it out that it was either cut or broken and that would have been after the date the order had already been denied….”
JACKSON: “Did you remove the SIM card for that phone, drive onto a military base, throw the SIM card in one dumpster and the phone in a different dumpster?”
HIGGINS: “That is not correct.”
JACKSON: “Did you testify –”
HACK JUDGE: “That’s your one question, Mr. Jackson.”
Hope the defense gets to pick up at this point tomorrow at 9. To recap, two cops, Brian Albert and Brian Higgins, get preservation orders from the court to retain their cell phone records. But the day before they receive said orders, or so they testify, they either got rid of the phones and/or changed phones.
Final question:
Have you ever destroyed a cell phone by removing the SIM card, then driving to a military base and tossing the card into one dumpster and the SIM card into a different one?
