Howie Carr: Karen Read prosecutor Hank Brennan’s mangled vocabulary

For $566,000, the taxpayers might have expected a little more effort from Hammered Hank Brennan.

For that kind of money — for just nine months — couldn’t he have worked a little more competently at trying to railroad Karen Read for a crime she obviously didn’t commit?

Maybe he was overconfident. After all, the hack judge was totally in the satchel for the frame job, at one point sustaining 49 consecutive Brennan objections to the defense’s questioning of a single witness.

At trial kickoff, Hank was handed the home-field advantage and a three-touchdown lead. But he ended up getting absolutely blown out by halftime. It wasn’t even close.

Brennan’s courtroom performance was so dreadful that unlike last year, this time Judge Auntie Bev couldn’t just summarily disregard the jury’s acquittals and declare a mistrial.

This time the verdict was, as Donald Trump might say, TOO BIG TO RIG.

In memory of our wasted $566,000, let’s look back at what Norfolk County taxpayers got for our money.

Here are some of Hank’s Greatest Hits:

For starters, he kept calling the victim, John O’Keefe, “John Keefe.” He also said he was a Canton native. (O’Keefe was from Braintree.)

One of his witnesses was Heather Maxon. He called her “Make-son.”

Of course, it was nothing personal. In court filings, Brennan misspelled his own name as “Breenan.”

One of the defense lawyers was Robert Alessi. Breenan insisted on calling him “Aleeci.”

Breenan squandered another $400,000 in public funds on the cartoonish “experts” from Aperture, Shanon Burgess and Jud Welcher. Their buffoonery quickly became the butt of jokes, but Hank defended what’s-their-names? to the hilt in his closing.

“As much as you want to make fun of him, Shanon Welcher found the key.”

Can we quote on that, Mr. Breenan?

He usually referred to Karen Read “the defendant,” but occasionally by name — “Ms. Wead,” as he called her.

Here are two of my favorite Hank quotes:

“There is no constitutional right to ooo-surp the rules of evidence.”

“The timeline in this case is beyond dis-poot.”

After the verdict, defense attorney Alan Jackson said his team had gone to great lengths to understand the science, to make sure they weren’t rolled by persecution “experts” like that composite Shanon Welcher guy.

Hank had no such concerns. He had the judge in his pocket, after all.

But Brennan should have at least… tried… to grasp the science. His complete lack of any prep work provided much of the trial’s unintended mirth.

The TV crowd’s favorite moment may have been when he referenced the occipital bone in the skull. Only he called it the “oxipital boner.”

He thought a subdural hemorrhage was “subdermal.”

He was corrected on that howler by former RI medical examiner Dr. Elizabeth Laposata. So then he asked her who was best qualified to determine a cause of death.

“The person who is best qualified is a physician,” she answered.

“So,” Breenan pounced, “a medical examiner wouldn’t cut it in your opinion?”

“A medical examiner,” Laposata responded with a sigh, “is a physician.”

Watching Hank mangle everything he touched, it was hard not to stifle a laugh, or as Hank would say, “stiffle.”

He pronounced carotid as “car-toy-ed.” Incisors came out as “inscissors.” Hematoma became “he-ba-toba.” He described a paramedic firefighter as a “parameric.” The Glasgow Coma Scale came out of his mouth as the “Goozma Scale.”

His grasp of modern technology was just as tenuous. Over and over he called the “Apple Health” app something else, usually Health Care Data. He fumbled the description of the software in Karen Read’ Lexus.

It’s “Techstream.” He kept saying it was “Telestream.” He called thumb drives or flash drives “zip drives.” Hash values became “hash tags.”

It was like he was back in Bush 41. He occasionally flashed back to the glory days of his hero, cocaine-dealing serial killer Whitey Bulger. He questioned one of the crooked state cops about a fellow lame-brain trooper by the name of Nicholas Guarino.

Only Hank called Guarino “Nicholas Gianturco.” That was a Boston FBI agent who, according to testimony, took cash payoffs from the Mob. Whitey always spoke highly of “Doc” Gianturco, which is why he was top of mind for Hank.

On another day, Hank delved into the frost bite suffered by “John Keefe.” Only he called the frost bite “freezer burn.” You know, like some wayward wise guys got in the movie Goodfellas.

Supposedly, Hank is a great lawyer. Or should I use his word — “supposably?”

The list of words mangled by Hank was endless. The defense team kept a running list, for their own amusement.

Anonymously became “amonymously.” Nefarious was “ne-fahhhhh-rious.” Data was dater, potatoes “bodados.” Cache was rendered “cash-ey.” Coup was “coop.” Chamois became “ka-mo-see.” Plethora came out as “plithora.” When he meant to say “eventually,” he would usually sputter “inevitably.”

Same thing with legalese and cop lingo. You know, “laurenforcement.”

The debris field was in Hank’s phrase the “dee-bwee fewld.” An unattended death became “unintended.” (Maybe it was.) He always liked to “co-wob-o-wate” the evidence. He complained about the lack of “we-sip-wo-cal” discovery. He called the plastic taillight on Karen’s SUV “glass.”

He thought the pavement on Fairview Road was concrete. (It was asphalt.)

One day he introduced himself to a witness with “Good afternoon.” It was 11:45.

When talking about speed, most people use the word “quickly.” Hank prefers “fastly.”

Here was another of Brennan’s strangely-worded questions to a witness:

“Did you think of a way that you look below the top of the snow without unresting the scene?”

Despite his alleged erudition (to use yet another word he doesn’t know the meaning of), Hank Breenan is not exactly cerebral, or as he pronounces it, “cerebri-uhl.”

You know, chain-smoking career prosecutor Adam Lally could have handled this second trial too, and lost badly, just like he did with the first time. And Lally would have saved the taxpayers a million bucks.

One final thought: stay safe. Nobody needs a fractured oxipital boner.

Check out Howie’s new Karen Read trial tee-shirt, “Where’s Chloe?” at howiecarrshow.com, click on store.