Judge rejects request to vacate conviction, new hearing in Delphi murders
Judge Gull’s order rejects motion to correct errors in Richard Allen’s trial without a hearing. Appeal countdown starts. Plus, Mental Health America is putting youth outreach on an ex-Colts party bus
Judge Fran Gull rejected an attempt by attorneys for Richard Allen, the Delphi man convicted of the 2017 murders of eighth-graders Libby German and Abby Williams near the Monon High Bridge Trail, to vacate the November 2024 verdict due to what they argued was a series of errors during the trial.
Gull, an Allen County judge assigned to the high-profile case, issued an order that appeared in Tuesday’s online docket for Allen’s case.
Gull’s order on the motion to correct errors came without a hearing.
The ruling starts the clock on an appeal that Allen indicated at his December sentencing was coming.
“Generally, a party has 30 days to initiate an appeal after the entry of a final judgment is noted in the docket,” Shay Hughes, a Lafayette-based defense attorney who has been following the Delphi case, said. “However, if a party files a motion to correct error, a notice of appeal must be within 30 days after the trial court’s ruling on such motion is noted in the docket. Thus, Allen has 30 days from the issuance of Judge Gull’s order to file a notice of appeal.”
Allen’s defense team – Brad Rozzi, Andrew Baldwin and Jennifer Auger – had raised questions about new evidence pointed to holes in the prosecution’s timeline of the murders; an alleged confession by another man; and the process that landed the 52-year-old clerk at the Delphi CVS in a state prison under a “safekeeping” order after he was arrested and charged in October 2022 – a situation they called pivotal in the case and that led to a state of psychosis and ensuing confessions between his arrest and his trial.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland responded earlier in February with a request for Gull to knock down those claims without a hearing.
Here’s more on the defense team’s motion and the prosecutor’s response:
Hughes said Gull’s ruling didn’t come as a surprise.
“It is a heavy burden for a defendant to vacate a judgment based on newly discovered evidence,” Hughes said. “Likewise, Allen acknowledged they had possession of much of the evidence referenced prior to trial.”
Gull agreed in January to allow State Public Defender Amy Karozos to have a second attorney assigned to Allen’s case to request an appeal, given the large volume of information tied to a case that took two years to get to trial – from arrest to opening statements – and then a month to reach a verdict in Carroll Circuit Court.
Gull sentenced Allen on Dec. 20 to 130 years in prison, the maximum allowed for the two murders, after a four weeks of testimony and jury deliberations in a trial that started in October.
Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, were found dead, with slashed necks, in the woods near Delphi’s Monon High Bridge Trail on Feb. 14, 2017, a day after they’d been dropped off to spend an afternoon hiking to the Monon High Bridge. Allen was arrested in October 2022, 5½ years after the murders – tied to the scene through a revisited case file related to his self-reported information to investigators in the days after the murders that he’d been on the Monon High Bridge Trail the day the girls went missing. The case against him was built around his admission about being on the bridge that day; an unspent round found at the crime scene that state police technicians determined came from a handgun Allen owned; a video of a man – dubbed “Bridge Guy” – found on Libby’s phone; and what prosecutors detailed as more than 60 confessions while Allen was awaiting trial.
Still in play: On Friday, Baldwin filed a motion to preserve and produce letters Ricci Davis, an inmate serving a 50-year sentence on methamphetamine charges, said he sent to McLeland before the trial started. According to court documents, Davis told Baldwin that he’d offered details of an alleged cell block confession by Ron Logan, who owned the land where Abby and Libby were found, that included a connection with Kegan Kline, a Peru man who was behind the fake “anthony_shots” profile that had been in contact with Libby German and who is serving time on charges of child exploitation, child solicitation and other crimes. Baldwin argued that if the letters exist, they weren’t shared with Allen’s defense team. He argued that the information in them could have changed the defense strategy and, even now, could affect the approach to an appeal.
McLeland hadn’t filed a response to that motion, as of Tuesday morning. Gull’s order, dated Feb. 14 and released Tuesday, did not include a ruling on that motion.
For more on that motion:
Whether that motion will delay the start of the 30-day appeal requirement, Hughes offered this: “If I was Allen’s counsel, I’d be concerned that a court may view his latest motion to preserve as a repetitive motion. Thus, best practice would be to file a Notice of Appeal within 30 days of Judge Gull’s order denying his motion to correct error.”
MHA PREPS MOBILE MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM, VIA AN IU HEALTH GRANT
The goal is to put a refurbished school bus – most recently used as an Indianapolis Colts fan’s tailgating headquarters – on the streets as Mental Health America-Wabash Valley Region’s new mobile outreach for teens is early December, in time to make a debut at the Lafayette Christmas Parade, Brandi Christiansen, president and CEO, says.
“They’re all pushing me around here to show it off – make it’s big debut – at the Christmas Parade, because that’s where everyone is,” Christiansen said. “And that’s what we want this to be – seen by everyone and let them know we’re coming to schools and everywhere else to meet youth where they’re at.”
Last week, IU Health announced a two-year, $250,000 grant to buy the bus and then trick it out for MHA’s new Mobile Mental Health Program. The bus will get mechanical work done through Ivy Tech Community College and eventually equipped with mobile, on-stie health screenings, counseling spaces and wellness programing, taken across MHA’s 11 county region centered in Lafayette.
The money for the bus project was part of $6.1 million from IU Health Community Impact Investment Fund grants for 12 Indiana organizations, awarded in December.
“What we saw, especially as a result of COVID, was an increase in the mental health needs,” Jennifer Andres, IU Health community impact investment and policy development director, said after presenting a check last week to MHA.
“That’s what this grant is all about, to lift people up,” Andres said. “We just thought this was a really innovative way to help reduce that stigma and give kids an opportunity to come in an approachable environment to help give resources. It’s kind of a spreading the word opportunity.”
Christiansen said the idea for this sort of direct outreach has been brewing for a while as a way of early intervention, to normalize getting help during a mental health crisis.
“Kids just want to have fun and you can’t make it too heavy for them,” Christiansen said. “But you’ve to let them be familiar with our name if you want them to reach out in that moment where they really need help, as in right now.”
She said the bus will be equipped with room to do mental health screenings, counseling and peer support programs. She said the bus would have VR headsets for interactive mental health education and techniques. Christiansen said she’s hoping to include a DJ booth. She said the bus would travel to schools and other community events in the region.
“Who cares how we reach them?” Christiansen said. “We want to be able to meet them where they’re at in whatever medium, just to plant some seeds and let them know that they’re not alone and let them know if they’re feeling a certain way, they can call us or text us. … And if they don’t know, maybe they’ll have a friend who has seen us with the bus and can help point them in our direction.”
Starting, most likely, at the Christmas Parade in December.
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