CARROLL COUNTY, Ind. – Defense attorneys for Delphi murder suspect Richard Allen fired the latest salvo in a contentious legal back and forth involving the defense, prosecution and the judge assigned to oversee the high-profile case.
Richard Allen is charged with four counts of murder in connection with the February 2017 deaths of Abby Williams and Libby German near the Monon High Bridge in Delphi. Indiana State Police announced his arrest in October 2022, more than five years after the killings. He’s currently awaiting trial.
The Indiana Supreme Court assigned Special Judge Fran Gull to the case after the original judge recused himself; Allen’s attorneys have tried on multiple occasions to have Gull removed from the proceedings, accusing her of bias. The state’s highest court declined to take Gull off the case, and the judge herself has denied two defense motions seeking her recusal.
In its latest motion, the defense claims the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office lied about the circumstances surrounding the transportation of a Westville Correctional Facility inmate for a June 2023 hearing—and that Gull contradicted the sheriff’s office report about the matter.
A hearing was scheduled for June 15, 2023, about Allen’s safekeeping order. His attorneys wanted an inmate to testify about “harsh, abusive and unconstitutional treatment” of Allen at Westville Correctional. The inmate, Robert Baston, was the key witness in the hearing, the defense said.
However, Baston refused to come out of his cell to testify. The sheriff’s office report indicated that Sheriff Tobe Leazenby, after being contacted by jail staff, called Gull’s office to inform them about the situation. The report from the sheriff’s office indicated that “Judge Gull’s office advised to leave Baston there if he did not want to attend the court hearing,” according to the motion.
In a May 31, 2024, order, Gull wrote that the “decision by the Deputy to leave without the witness was his and was not directed by the Court.” Allen’s attorneys said the May order was the first time they noticed a discrepancy between the sheriff’s office’s account and what Gull said.
The information from the May order was part of Gull’s response to the latest attempt by the defense to have her removed from the case.
Allen’s attorneys said Gull didn’t make the defense aware of the discrepancy before her May order and never admonished the sheriff’s office for “filing a report that contains such a flagrant falsehood and which is arguably an attempt to cover up their illegal actions in ignoring a valid defense subpoena.”
The defense contended that Gull’s statement effectively made her a witness for the defense.
“Judge Gull should recuse herself from this matter as she is now a witness in the proceedings,” the defense wrote in its motion.
The motion also contains a response to Gull’s allegation that the defense team improperly filed some court documents that it intended to shield from the prosecution. Gull said the documents had been filed as confidential, which kept them out of public view, instead of ex parte, which would’ve kept them away from the prosecution.
The defense said the documents were filed correctly and blamed court staff for incorrectly providing the information to Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland and his staff.
“In this case, after the defense correctly filed the Ex Parte Motion, somehow court staff erred in how it processed the document into the system, causing Prosecutor McLeland to have access to the Ex Parte document,” the motion said. The defense said the motion was intended for the “purposes of preserving the issues for the record.”
Attorneys reiterated their desire to have Allen, who’s currently housed at an Indiana Department of Correction facility, moved to the Cass County Jail or Tippecanoe County Jail while he awaits his trial, which is scheduled for October.
