CARROLL COUNTY, Ind. — A lawyer representing Delphi double murder suspect Richard Allen’s defense team has filed a motion seeking continuance of a hearing before Special Judge Fran Gull Monday who will consider a complaint of contempt lodged against the defenders.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland filed the complaint in January, one day after the Indiana Supreme Court reinstated Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi as Allen’s attorneys.
Baldwin and Rozzi stepped down in October, they said, under pressure from Judge Gull who was displeased with the leak of crime scene evidence from Baldwin’s office to social media Delphi followers.
Baldwin said that a former associate had unauthorized access to photographs of the bodies of Libby German and Abby Williams discovered near the Monon High Bridge on Feb. 14, 2017.
Today’s motion for continuance filed by Attorney David Hennessy claims that Indiana State Police and McLeland were tardy in supplying interviews of social media posters that began in early October of last year when the leak was first discovered. The motion asserts that the defense team received those interviews only this week, leaving it little time to examine or confirm the statements contained within before Monday’s hearing which will partially rely on arguments that Baldwin and Rozzi were careless with case evidence.
The motion quotes an Indiana State trooper telling social media posters that their failure to cooperate with the investigation could result in contempt of court charges and the man who was the first recipient of the leaked photographs took his own life after the ISP interview.
The motion also alleges, but provides no verification, that one social media poster told an ISP detective that, “She also revealed that a person known to her had hired a private investigator to follow Mr. McLeland.”
The motion for continuance follows by one day a motion filed by the defense to “Stay All Ancillary Proceedings and Get This Case to Trial,” specifically to cease with the contempt hearing as well as recuse McLeland and Judge Gull from participating in the contempt case after the court agreed to a defense motion for a speedy trial to begin May 13th in Fort Wayne with jury selection before moving the proceedings to Carroll County.
These are only the latest twists and turns in a controversial and convoluted case.
It took investigators five-and-a-half years to realize they had an interview in their files with Allen from February of 2017, just a few days after the bodies of Libby German and Abby Williams were found outside of Delphi, when he admitted he had been on the Monon High Bridge that day.
From the time of Allen’s arrest in October of 2022, the proceedings have been cloaked in secrecy, false starts, acrimony and interventions in an attempt to get the case back on track.
”I think it gets complicated because the investigation took so long and there are so many avenues that the police take, they have to follow up so many things,” said Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings, himself a former police officer. ”I would say that’s fairly unique. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen issues with the judge and removing the defense counsel and then their request to remove the judge and those issues having to be decided by the Supreme Court before you even get to a trial. I don’t recall a case when anything like that’s happened during my tenure.”
Within weeks of the appointments of Bradley Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin to defend Allen in November of 2022, after his arrest and initial hearing without media or legal counsel present and following the resignation of the first Carroll County judge on the case, the defense team was subject to a gag order by Special Judge Gull as she tried to reign in the defenders and their aggressive public pre-trial defense of their client.
It was a short time later when Baldwin inadvertently emailed defense work product to the account of someone not connected to the case and so advised the court of his mistake.
Last summer, the defense team became aware of an investigative inquiry into an alternate theory of the girls’ murders due to ritualistic sacrifice and so postulated it in a motion, since denied, alleging the state and Indiana State Police refused to take the theory seriously or provide documents of such under discovery to Allen’s lawyers.
That dispute was raised within weeks of another leak, the crime scene photographs to the social media posters.
That led Judge Gull to warn the defense team that she would criticize them in open court unless they stepped down, which they did, and then immediately had second thoughts, resulting in a ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court in January putting them back on the case which resulted in this week’s speedy trial scheduling.
The defense team also unsuccessfully sought to have Judge Gull removed from the case.
Cummings said the latest flurry of motions might be part of a defense strategy to sidetrack McLeland during his trial preparation.
“I don’t know if it’s to keep him occupied, to keep the prosecutor occupied, but it also protects the record and there is so much discovery in a case that is investigated that long,” said Cummings. “It’s gonna be difficult to keep track of everything and have all that available and the more often that the defense attorneys request certain things or make those motions, it’s more likely they can make an effort to find error that they can use on appeal.”
Even veteran court watchers and participants say they have never seen an Indiana murder case with so many twists and turns before trial.
Judge Gull still has not ruled on a request from news media to permit cameras in the courtroom to broadcast the proceedings live.
”As it’s reported on or if there’s cameras in the courtroom having an opportunity to see what’s happening will probably clarify some of those questions for individuals who aren’t familiar with the system,” said Cummings. ”People who aren’t familiar with the system don’t always understand why things occur the way they occur but I think that when the trial is had, when that happens, and the light is shined on the evidence and the process, I think people will understand much better.”
