Richard Allen and his defense team continue their case in the Delphi murders

DELPHI, Ind. – At 9:07 a.m. Wednesday, just after jurors in the double murder trial of Richard Allen entered the downtown Delphi courtroom to begin the day’s trial, Special Judge Frances Gull He asked the defense to call its next witness.

Instead, Bradley Rozzi said three words that caught prosecutors off guard: “Defense is being heard“

Allen’s defense attorneys rested their case after less than a week of depositions; This is an indication that the long-awaited trial may conclude sooner than expected. Closing arguments will begin on Thursday.

Legal experts following the case say Allen’s lawyers were hampered by Gull’s decision to prevent them from presenting a significant portion of their defense, while the real killers were a group of Odinists who committed murder. Abigail “Abby” Williams and Liberty “Libby” German during a bloody ritual in the forest. But experts say the defense team was also able to meaningfully challenge some of the prosecution’s strongest evidence against Allen by calling experts with sufficient authority to rebut critical testimony from state witnesses.

“I think they did an excellent job of showing the two main points of their defense,” said Indianapolis defense attorney John Tompkins, who is prosecuting the case. “The first was that Mr. Allen’s mental state at the time of these purported confessions and statements admitting responsibility was clearly unreliable.”

The other was a forensic analysis of Libby’s phone data, which revealed new information about what may have happened to the girls hours after they disappeared off the Monon High Bridge trail on Feb. 13, 2017, Tompkins said.

These testimonies It happened on Tuesday. Stuart Grassian is an expert on solitary confinement. I told the jurors Allen’s strange behavior and mental state at the time Westville Prison was “perfectly consistent” with the effects of long-term isolation. Testimony of Massachusetts-based psychiatrist, dozens of confessions Allen traveled to Westville, where he was held in solitary confinement for a little more than a year, to support the defense’s claim that a serious mental health crisis caused him to give a false confession.

Later that day, Stacy Eldridge, a digital forensic expert hired by the defense, I told the jurors He said a headphone jack was plugged into Libby’s phone for about five hours after he and Abby disappeared. The only explanation he could think of, Eldridge testified, was that he was with the girls from 5:45 to 10:30 p.m., when prosecutors allege their bodies had already been lying near Deer Creek for hours. Until then, defense attorney Andrew Baldwin In his opening speech he said:Allen had long left his mark and was already home.

“I think they did everything they could do. The experts they brought in were very reliable experts,” said Indiana University professor Jody Madeira, referring to Tennessee-based forensic consultant Eric Warren. raised questions about one Indiana State Police investigator’s findings What connects Allen’s gun to the unspent bullet found among the girls’ bodies.

Madeira also said Grassian emerged as a “sophisticated” expert whose testimony went a long way in convincing jurors that Allen’s confessions were unreliable.

“I think it depends largely on what the jurors find most credible,” Madeira said. “They have what the prosecution says and they have an alternative.”

Allen is charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while kidnapping the girls. Prosecutors alleged he followed Abby and Libby across the Monon High Bridge, threatened them with a gun and forced them into the woods, where he slit their throats and killed them.

Defense attorneys countered that Allen was an innocent man caught up in a botched investigation, whose already fragile mental health escalated into psychosis after months of solitary confinement. They put forward an alternative theory OdinistsMembers of the pagan Norse religion kidnapped by white nationalists killed teenagers during a sacrificial ritual.

However, Gull repeatedly ruled that the lawyers had failed to produce acceptable evidence of Odinism. That hampers the defense, Madeira said, because even if they point to serious errors and abuses alleged during the investigation and present jurors with alternative expert testimony, they can’t give them the full picture of what they believe happened.

“In other words,” Madeira said, “they can answer the what, but not the how.”

Without the opportunity to present much of the case, attorneys focused on clarifying their view that Allen was suffering from a genuine mental health crisis when he confessed to the crimes.

They also called a neuropsychologist who testified Contrary to the testimony of his Westville therapist, Allen was not exhibiting pseudo-psychotic behavior. Them showed the jury members Hours of silent footage of Allen’s life in prison. And they called Allen’s half-sister and her daughter who testified he never abused either of them – the testimony was intended to prove that Allen’s psychosis caused him to confess to things he never did, such as abusing family members.

Tompkins, the Indianapolis defense attorney, said hearing from Allen’s family members, even briefly, allowed jurors to “establish a relationship with the person sitting at the defense table.”

“Those are the people who knew him best,” Tompkins said. Having family members testify “was a very effective way to show that the reality of the people who knew him was supported by the science of the people who studied his circumstances.”

After the defense heard on Wednesday morning, prosecutors witnesses were called Eliminating the harsh conditions of incarceration that Allen’s attorneys presented to jurors and finding that Allen’s psychosis was not consistent.

Brian HarshmanThe Indiana State Police veteran, who listened to hundreds of Allen’s calls from prison, testified that Allen had been in a solitary cell for most of the last two years since his arrest. The implication of Harshman’s statement was that Allen was mostly stable except for three months in 2023.

Harshman said he was allowed to rest in Westville and was able to communicate with neighbors from his cell. Conditions of imprisonment were the same Wabash Valley PrisonAbout a year later he was transferred to Westville. The Cass County Jail, where he is being held during his trial, has a small break room and a table.

The most critical testimony of the day came from Dr. Dr., a psychiatrist in Westville who saw Allen multiple times between April 2023 and June 2023. It came from John Martin. Martin said Allen had signs of psychosis when he was found lying naked on April 13, 2023. His body is contaminated with feces. However, Allen gradually recovered after he was injected with antipsychotic medication.

Martin’s testimony focused on a key date: June 20, 2023.

He told jurors that day that he saw no signs of psychosis in Allen and decided to stop taking the medication. And during his meeting with Allen – during a period of mental health – he once again admitted responsibility for killing the girls.

“He said to me that day: ‘I want to apologize to Abby and Libby’s families,'” Martin testified.

But during cross-examination, Rozzi played a video of Allen taken the same day.

Allen sat motionless while strapped into a wheelchair during the medical examination. Dressed in a white T-shirt and bright orange pants, a thin-looking Allen stares forward and barely moves as doctors take his blood pressure and scan him with a stethoscope. As the video played, Allen shielded his eyes with his hands and lifted his head to look at his wife, sister, and mother; They all kept their heads down as they cried silently in the courtroom.

“Does this video cause you to question your diagnosis that Mr. Allen was no longer in a psychotic state on June 20, 2023?” Rozzi asked Martin, who had never seen the video.

“Yes,” said Martin.

Answering the questions of the jury members, Martin said that it is possible to go in and out of psychosis on the same day. Jurors also asked Martin about Allen’s Westville therapist, Dr. According to Monica Wala’s testimony, after watching the video, she asked if she believed Allen was committing fraud.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Contact IndyStar reporter Kristine Phillips at (317) 444-3026 or: [email protected].

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