Pivotal hearings delayed in Delphi murders, as judge deals with another call to step down

Plus, former golf pro pleads guilty in fatal drunken driving crash. County starts juvenile detention design. Purdue prof nearly called back to Trump trial. Stop the Water Steal founder plots rebound

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HEARING DELAYED IN DELPHI MURDERS, AS JUDGE ANSWERS MOTION TO RECUSE HERSELF

Judge Fran Gull canceled three days of pretrial hearings, set to start Tuesday, in the case against Richard Allen, after the defense team filed a motion late last week angling to disqualify the judge in the Delphi murders case.

Attorneys for Allen, arrested in October 2022 and accused of the murders of Delphi teens Abby Williams and Libby German, had argued in a series of motions last week that they needed more time to go over recent evidence shared by the prosecution before what had been setting up as three pivotal days ahead of an October 2024 trial.

Gull had rejected most of those motions, setting hearings this week on a number of issues hanging over the case. But after Brad Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin, Allen’s defense team, filed a motion Friday calling on Gull to step down or be removed, the judge canceled this week’s court dates scheduled in Carroll County.

“As the court is now required to review and rule upon the 42-page pleading, the court is compelled to cancel the pretrial hearing previously set with counsels' agreement,” Gull wrote in in a one-page order Monday. She noted the action came over the prosecution’s objections.

Judge Fran Gull (Photo via media pool video)

This was the defense team’s second attempt to get Gull off the case. The first was rejected by the Indiana Supreme Court in February, at the same time Rozzi and Baldwin were reinstated as Allen’s attorneys.