Attorneys for Karen Read argued Friday for dismissal of murder and leaving the scene of an accident charges, asking the judge in the case to conduct a special hearing to confirm what they believe to be true — that jurors voted unanimously to acquit her of killing her Boston cop boyfriend.

Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial when the jurors reported for a third time that they could not reach a verdict, as CrimeOnline reported. But Read was charged with three counts, and Cannone did not poll the jury to find out if they were deadlocked on all three charges.

Prosecutors accused Read of hitting John O’Keefe outside a friend’s house in 2022 and leaving him to die. Her attorneys argued in court that O’Keefe was beaten up inside the home and that other police officers framed her for his murder.

Almost immediately after the July 1 mistrial, Read’s defense said it had heard from jurors that they were actually deadlocked only on a vehicular manslaughter charge and had voted not guilty on the other two. And last week, prosecutors admitted they’d heard the same thing.

But prosecutors are insisting on retrying the entire case anyway, and Cannone set a trial date for early next year. The defense filed a motion for dismissal of the two charges in question.

“There is strong and uncontradicted evidence that the jury reached a unanimous decision, even if it wasn’t formalized,” Martin Weinberg told the judge on Friday, CourtTV reported.

Weinberg cited the review done in the case of convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh in South Carolina, when Murdaugh’s attorneys accused then-court clerk Becky Hill of tampering with jurors and pressuring them to convict the disgraced lawyer of killing his wife and son. A retired judge conducted that review and ultimately denied the request for a new trial.

Prosecutor Adam Lally argued against dismissal — and the review — saying it just wasn’t legal.

“What counsel is proposing as far as what the court should do is prohibited by the rules, it’s prohibited by the law,” Lally said. “There was no verdict returned by this jury.”

Weinberg responded that the jury did, in fact, vote for acquittal, but the verdict was not returned formally.

“We’re asking the court not to close the door to this new evidence and really adopt the fiction that the impasse was on all three counts when we now know with strong, corroborated, trustworthy evidence it was not,” he said.

“Order a hearing judge,”Weinberg said, according to WCVB. “Don’t make Ms. Read the first person in the history of the Commonwealth to face re-prosecution for murder by the same prosecutors’ office that tried once and failed to convince a jury that she was guilty.”

Cannone said she would take the arguments under advisement. She did not offer a timeline for a ruling.

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[Featured image: Karen Read/LinkedIn and John O’Keefe/police handout]