New Zealand cricket head coach Gary Stead steps down from limited-overs formats

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New Zealand cricket head coach Gary Stead steps down from limited-overs formats

2025-04-08 08:28 Last Updated At：08:41

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Gary Stead confirmed on Tuesday he will no longer coach New Zealand in the Twenty20 and one-day international formats and is considering his future in test cricket.

Stead said he expects to take a month to reach a final decision. The 53-year-old Stead has coached New Zealand in all formats since taking over from Mike Hesson in 2018.

New Zealand Cricket said it would advertise from next week and is yet to decide whether it will appoint different coaches to different formats.

Stead guided New Zealand to the finals of the 2019 ICC World Cup, the 2022 T20 World Cup and this year’s Champions Trophy. He also led New Zealand to victory in the inaugural World Test Championship.

“Gary’s results have been very impressive over a long period and we’re very comfortable giving him some time to collect his thoughts,” NZC high performance officer Bryan Stronach said in a statement.

“At the moment we haven’t any strong preference for either a split-coaching role or a sole appointment who covers all three formats and we’re unlikely to be clearer on that until we see who’s putting their name forward.”

New Zealand has just completed a 4-1 win over Pakistan in a home T20 series and a 3-0 win in the one-day international series. Those results were achieved with an under-strength side with many leading players unavailable because of the Indian Premier League.

“I’m looking forward to getting away from touring life for a while and having a think about my future,” Stead said. “My focus has been on finishing the season strongly with a lesser experienced team.

“The past six to seven months has been particularly busy with relatively non-stop cricket action since September. I now want to evaluate my options but still feel I have coaching left in me, albeit not as head coach across all formats.”

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

US Supreme Court won't delay Karen Read's murder trial which should start next week

2025-04-11 00:18 Last Updated At：00:21

The U.S. Supreme Court will not delay Karen Read’s second murder trial on claims of double jeopardy, setting the stage for opening statements to be presented next week.

Read’s attorneys had filed an emergency appeal for a delay in the trial, contending that trying her again on second-degree murder and leaving the scene would be double jeopardy. But the high court's denial means the trial could start early next week, since all but one of the jurors have been chosen. Jury selection began last week. Lawyers are seeking to seat 16 jurors, with four serving as alternates.

Read, who lives in Mansfield, Massachusetts, is accused of striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in 2022 outside a house party in nearby Canton. Her attorneys have said O’Keefe was actually killed by someone else, possibly another law enforcement agent who was at the party, and that she was framed.

Last year, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.

After the trial, several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of the most serious charge, second-degree murder, and a lesser charge. Despite attempts by Read’s lawyers to get those charges dismissed, she will face the same counts as she did at her first trial. They also failed to have the entire case tossed, arguing governmental misconduct.

Read, who worked as a financial analyst and as a Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.

After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.

As they did at the first trial, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple's relationship had begun to sour before O'Keefe's death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother's wife testified that Read told her the couple had argued in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.

The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.

Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He is also on the prosecution's witness list.

A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.

They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read's lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O'Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can't mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend Brian Higgins. Lawyers cannot implicate Albert's nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.

A town-commissioned Canton Police Department audit following O'Keefe's death was released Sunday. While not reinvestigating any cases, its top suggestions regarding Read's were that first responders should have photographed O'Keefe where he was found before he was moved; that all interviews of “critical witnesses” should have been done at the department after O'Keefe was taken to a hospital; and that agreed-to recordings of witness interviews be conducted.

Soon after the mistrial, Read's lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.

They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.

The defense said that because jurors had agreed Read wasn't guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state's highest court, a federal court judge, and an appeals court.

Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to "hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.

The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read's passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.

The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented several prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.