Jury selection starts today in Delphi murders trial

It’s scheduled to take three days to seat jurors from Allen County, before returning to Carroll County for the next five weeks for the highly anticipated trial of Richard Allen

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JURY SELECTION STARTS TODAY IN DELPHI MURDER TRIAL

With jury selection starting Monday in Fort Wayne for Richard Allen, the 52-year-old Delphi man accused in the February 2017 murders of Delphi teens Abby Williams and Libby German, it’s hard to imagine that going even 95 miles up Indiana 25/U.S 24 will be enough to find a jury pool sufficiently unfamiliar with such a sensational case.

At one point, Allen’s attorneys Brad Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin had pushed to move the trial at least 150 miles from Delphi, where the investigation into Abby and Libby’s murders has been an all-consuming, community affair. They’d noted in a 2022 motion that many in the county of roughly 20,000 people directly involved in some facet of the initial search for the girls after they didn’t return from a Monday afternoon on the Monon High Bridge Trail or in the questioning in a massive investigation that followed over the next 5½ years, until Allen was arrested and charged in October 2022.

(Photo: Frank Oliver)

Judge Fran Gull, assigned to oversee the case after then Carroll Circuit judge Benjamin Diener recused himself, agreed to get a jury pool from her home court in Allen County and bring jurors to Delphi for Allen’s trial. In January 2023, Gull told the prosecutor and Allen’s defense team, “I think it's really important that we try the case in Carroll County.”

Jurors picked over the next three days will come to Delphi for arguments expected to start Friday in Carroll Circuit Court. The trial is scheduled through Nov. 15.

Clockwise from left: Richard Allen’s attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Brad Rozzi; Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland; and Judge Fran Gull. (File photos)

I talked to Shay Hughes, a criminal defense attorney in Tippecanoe County who has been watching and offering legal breakdowns of the twists in the Delphi murder case, about how he sized up jury selection in Fort Wayne, where news coverage has been as big as it’s been anywhere else.