Crime
Jessica Leslie’s attorney made an apparent reference to Read’s legal saga Thursday when he said Leslie was “caught up in the fervor surrounding that case.”
A Dracut woman who purportedly served as a grand juror on the Karen Read federal probe will serve two months of home confinement after pleading guilty to leaking information from the top-secret proceedings.
Prosecutors said Jessica Leslie, 34, shared sensitive grand jury information with a friend, who then posted the details to social media. Leslie pleaded guilty to one count of criminal contempt in August, just weeks after she was charged.
“I just want the court to know and you to know that I’m sincerely sorry for what I did,” Leslie said tearfully during Thursday’s sentencing hearing, according to The Boston Globe. “I truly regret what I did not only because I’m here today, but as a law abiding citizen my entire life.”
As part of her plea agreement, prosecutors and Leslie’s defense attorney recommended she be spared prison time with a sentence of “one day, deemed served.” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ultimately sentenced Leslie to two years of probation and two months of home detention, saying Leslie had been “flippant” about the oath she took to keep grand jury proceedings confidential, according to the Globe.
Court filings indicate Leslie has also been fired from her post with the state’s Department of Children and Families as a result of her criminal case.
Prosecutors have said she leaked information about two matters that were before the grand jury between Aug. 11, 2022, and March 4, 2024, including “the identity of witnesses, the dates on which they appeared, and the topics they testified about,” according to a sentencing memorandum. While prosecutors have not named the two cases in question, multiple news outlets have identified them as the since-closed federal probe of Read’s murder case and an unrelated Massachusetts State Police bribery investigation.
“In one circumstance, [Leslie’s] friend posted about a sealed indictment before the targets were arrested,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “Someone saw the Tweet, was rightfully concerned, and reported the leak. The defendant was identified as the source and, when questioned by the FBI, admitted to disclosing the secret information and that she knew it was wrong.”
According to the Globe, Leslie’s attorney, Keith Halpern, made an apparent reference to Read’s legal saga Thursday when he said Leslie was “caught up in the fervor surrounding that case” and was being pressed for information by a friend who was “obsessed” with the proceedings.
Read, 45, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in June in connection with the 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Her lawyers maintained she was framed in a law enforcement coverup, but a federal probe of the state’s handling of the case ended earlier this year with no charges or arrests announced.
“It’s clear that [Leslie’s] friend believed a horrible wrong had been done to someone and the grand jury proceeding was looking to correct that in some way,” Halpern said, according to the Globe. “They both saw this grand jury proceeding as seeking some sort of justice for someone they believed was a victim.”
He said Leslie “made a bad error in judgment” and “trusted that the friend was going to keep her mouth shut.”
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