A girl charged with leaking grand jury material associated to the Karen Learn homicide case has pleaded responsible, the Division of Justice mentioned Tuesday.
Jessica Leslie, 34, pleaded responsible in a Boston federal court docket on Monday to a cost of legal contempt that accused her of willfully disobeying court docket guidelines in opposition to disclosure of grand jury info, the DOJ mentioned.
Leslie had served on the grand jury as a part of the investigation into Learn, who was in the end acquitted of homicide within the 2022 loss of life of her boyfriend.
Federal prosecutors mentioned that between Aug. 11, 2022, and March 4, 2024, Leslie disclosed “sealed info to unauthorized people, together with the names of varied witnesses showing earlier than a federal grand jury, the substance of witness testimony and different proof introduced to the grand jury.”
Leslie agreed to a sentence of incarceration for someday, deemed served, and 24 months of supervised launch, court docket data mentioned. Her sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 26.
The homicide retrial of Karen Learn continues in Norfolk Superior Courtroom, June 9, 2025.
Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe through Getty Photographs
Whereas the charging doc didn’t specify that Leslie was a grand juror within the Learn case, sources confirmed the case to ABC Information.
Federal prosecutors didn’t say how they realized Leslie had disclosed secret grand jury info, however sources mentioned authorities had been monitoring social media accounts and different communications throughout a case that acquired widespread consideration.
Learn was initially indicted by a Boston grand jury in June 2022 within the loss of life of her police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe. Prosecutors alleged Learn hit O’Keefe together with her automotive outdoors the house of a fellow police officer after an evening of heavy ingesting in January 2022 after which left him to die there throughout a significant blizzard.
The primary trial ended in a mistrial final 12 months after the jury was unable to succeed in a unanimous verdict.
In a second trial that resulted in June, Learn was found not guilty of probably the most severe costs in opposition to her — homicide, manslaughter and leaving the scene after an accident. She was convicted of working underneath the affect of liquor and sentenced to at least one 12 months of probation.
