The trial of Richard Allen, who is accused of killing two Delphi, Indiana, teenagers back in 2017, has been pushed back to October.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin next week, but on Tuesday, Special Judge Fran Gull accepted a defense attorney’s request to waive Allen’s right to a speedy trial, WTHR reported. Allen’s defense attorneys had asked for 15 days to present the case and said if Gull wouldn’t allow that in May, the trial could be moved to a later date.
“If you can’t try this case in one month, there’s something wrong,” Gull told Allen’s attorneys at the hearing, according to WTHR.
“You don’t know anything about this case,” Allen’s attorney, Brad Rozzi, responded.
The exchange highlighted a contentious relationship between the judge and Allen’s defense attorneys. Gull had previously forced Rozzi and Allen’s other attorney, Andrew Baldwin, to withdraw from the case by threatening to embarrass them in open court. The attorneys took the case to the Indiana Supreme Court and were reinstated, but their request to remove Gull as judge was denied.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Baldwin also introduced a motion again requesting that Gull be removed from the case.
Rozzi argued that it was not practical for the trial to start so soon, with issues like whether the jury will hear Allen’s jailhouse confessions – which the defense contends came under duress – still pending. He suggested that no end date be set for the trial.
“We’re not saying we’re not ready – we’re just saying we don’t want you to bookend this,” Rozzi said multiple times during the hearing.
The new trial will run from October 15 to November 15, Fox 59 reported, and three days of pretrial evidence hearings will take place between May 21 and May 23.
The hearing came just a week after Gull declined to hold Baldwin and Rozzi in contempt but called them “incompetent.” Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland had accused defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi of contempt of court due to an evidence leak and allegations they violated a gag order, Fox 59 reported.
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Gull said in her ruling that McLeland “proved by a preponderance of the evidence that defense counsel was sloppy, negligent and incompetent in their handling of discovery material.” However, she added that the prosecutor failed to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the attorneys were “willful and intentional” in their actions.
Gull also agreed with the defense attorneys that they didn’t violate the gag order because it was put in place after they made the remarks McLeland claimed violated it.
Allen was charged in October 2022 with two counts of murder while committing or attempting to commit the kidnapping of 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German on a hiking trail in 2017. In late January, McLeland filed a request to amend the charges to include two additional counts of murder and two counts of kidnapping, WTHR reported.