Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Delphi Murders: Richard Allen Seeks Retrial

Transcript

Delphi Murders: Richard Allen Seeks Retrial · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this deep dive. Today, we're asking a pretty
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: terrifying question, honestly. Like, what actually happens when the justice
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: system's most, you know, powerful piece of evidence, a confession,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: comes from a man who has spent 13 months in
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: solitary confinement?
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just solitary, but a guy who was
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: literally eating his own feces and hallucinating. Right.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Does the law look at that and see a
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: murderer finally coming clean? Or is I mean, does it
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: see a completely broken mind just saying absolutely whatever it
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: takes to survive the darkness?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: That is the exact question at the center of what
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: we're looking at today. It's one of the most agonizing
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: and honestly highly contested legal battles in recent memory.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the appellate court hearing for the Delphite
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: murders case, the state of Indiana versus Richard Allen.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Right. And, you know, the public consciousness has just been
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: haunted by this case for years. Two young girls, Abby
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Williams and Libby German, who were murdered near the Monon
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana, back in 2017.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's a case everyone knows. But today, we are pulling
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: our insights directly from a very specific, very revealing set
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: of sources.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, we are going straight to the official court TV
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: transcripts of the oral arguments. This is the stuff presented
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: by both the defense and the state during Richard Allen's appeal.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So no internet rumors.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: None of that.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: This is about the exact legal, constitutional, and factual battlegrounds
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: that were debated in front of the appellate judges.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And our mission here is strictly analytical. We aren't
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: here to decide guilt or innocence. We're here to examine
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the mechanics of a fair trial. Right.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And you might be asking, why should you, listening to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: this right now, care about the procedural plumbing of an
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: appellate court?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It's a fair question.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: But this case is a real-time masterclass in the friction
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: between society's completely understandable desire to solve a horrific cold case,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and the unyielding constitutional requirements that are supposed to protect
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: us all.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: It really asks a foundational question about evidence itself. And
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: to grasp the stakes here, you have to understand the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: specific role of an appellate court. It's not like what
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: you see on TV.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, break that down for us, because it's not just
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: a trial do-over, right?
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. When you watch a regular trial,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: you see a jury, right? They're weighing evidence. They're deciding
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: who to believe, figuring out if a witness is lying.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: They're judging the facts. Exactly.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: But appellate courts, they operate on a completely different frequency.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: They do not reweigh the evidence.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So they don't care if the witness seems sketchy?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Nope. They are looking strictly for procedural and constitutional errors
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: made by the trial judge. They want to know if
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: the structure of the trial itself was fundamentally unfair.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Got it. So they are checking the math of the trial,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: not the final score.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: OK, so let's start with the most damning piece of
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: evidence in any trial, which is the confession. Usually, if
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a defendant says, I did it, I mean, the game
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: is over, right?
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Usually, yes. It's devastating for the defense.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But the defense's entire appeal here hinges not on the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: fact that he confessed, but, you know, the environment that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: actually manufactured those confessions.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Right, the environment. And the defense paints this deeply disturbing
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: picture of the conditions surrounding these statements. We're talking about
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: a pretrial detainee.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Which means legally presumed innocent at this point.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Presumed innocent. And he's placed in solitary confinement, often
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: called the hole, for 13 consecutive months.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Which the defense argues is completely unprecedented in modern Indiana
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: history for a pretrial detainee. Like, it just doesn't happen.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's extreme. And they argue the state didn't just
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: casually place him there. They actively exploited the mental decompensation
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: that happened as a result.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Because the clinical records they cite, I mean, they are harrowing.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: By April 14th, Dr. Martin assessed Alan.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And that assessment is grim. He found Alan totally incommunicado,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: literally covered in and eating his own feces.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Just horrific.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And he was speaking with what the doctor called a
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: flight of ideas.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Which is a very specific medical term, right? What does
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: that actually look like? Yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Flight of ideas is a psychiatric term. It describes a
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: state where a person's thoughts and speech just race rapidly
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: from one topic to another.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So no logical connection between the thoughts. Right. Exactly.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It's driven by severe mania or psychosis. And Dr. Martin
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: officially deemed Alan seriously mentally ill or SMI and gravely disabled.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Wow. Gravely disabled.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. His condition was so acute that the state actually
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: required forcible injections of the antipsychotic medication Haldol.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Which is a heavy, heavy drug.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: And the defense specifically notes he received three standard doses
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: of this plus a fourth emergency dose literally just to
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: stabilize him.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Just to bring him back to a baseline. Yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: So the defense points to these forced injections and they
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: essentially say to the court, look, you shattered his mind.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And to legally back this up, They introduced this thing
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: called a 2012 IP Pass Order and Settlement Agreement.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which sounds super boring and bureaucratic.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It totally does. Like legal jargon. But I want to
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: pause on it because it's actually this massive piece of
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: legal leverage.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Because this settlement agreement is proof that the state of
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Indiana legally acknowledged way back in 2012 that keeping mentally
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: ill individuals in solitary confinement causes severe psychological pain and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: violates established protocols.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Right. What's fascinating here is how the defense is utilizing
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: that 2012 settlement. They are using it to establish a
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: foundation of knowledge and intent.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Like, you guys knew this was bad.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are arguing that the state absolutely cannot claim ignorance.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: The state knew the environment was inherently destructive to human psychology,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: but they left a presumed innocent man in that environment
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: for over a year anyway.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And the defense leans heavily on legal precedent here. They
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: cite this case called DF from the Seventh Circuit Court
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of Appeals and the Supreme Court.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, DF. That case deals with what's called de novo
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: review for the voluntariness of confessions.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, stop right there. Explain how de novo review works
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: in this context because that's a heavy legal term.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so de novo is a Latin term meaning from
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the new.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: And in appellate context, it just means the appellate judges
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: can look at the issue like whether a confession was
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: voluntary with fresh eyes.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, so they don't have to just blindly agree with
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: whatever the trial judge decided.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They don't have to defer to the lower court.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: They can reevaluate the constitutional standard entirely on their own.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. And they also cite the Spano case, right?
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Spano is crucial. It provides a framework for evaluating coerciveness.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Because coercion isn't just, you know, what we see in movies. Right.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Spano establishes that a coerced confession doesn't just mean a
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: detective holding a rubber hose in a dark interrogation room.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Coercion is a sliding scale.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: It means you have to weigh the tactics used by
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the state directly against the specific mental health and vulnerability
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: of that individual suspect.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Got it. So if the guy is already mentally broken,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: it takes a lot less pressure from the state to
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: cross the line into coercion.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Precisely. But the state's argument in the transcript pushes back
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: so vehemently against this whole narrative of psychological torture.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Right. They have a totally different spin on it. They
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: argue this was never about punishment. They say it was
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: about safekeeping.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, safekeeping. Because of the horrific notoriety of the crime,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: you know, an accused child killer, the state claims that
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: placing him in the general jail population would have been
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: an immediate death sentence.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: The other inmates would have killed him.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: That's their argument. So they say this solitary confinement was
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: technically just a suicide watch and a protective measure for
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: his own good.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And the state goes even further.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Detailing how Allen was allegedly treated better than a typical
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: inmate in restricted housing.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. They point to a whole series of accommodations.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: They say he was provided a free iPad to watch movies,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: play games and make phone calls.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: And apparently when he destroyed that iPad, the state just
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: replaced it.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Right. They also note he was granted in-person visits from
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: his wife, which the state emphasizes is virtually unheard of
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: for inmates in restricted housing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: OK, so they're painting a picture of him hanging out
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: on an iPad. seeing his wife, and they also mention
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: he received daily, or at least weekly, mental health checks
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: from a Dr. Walla.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, but their most powerful counter-argument regarding the confessions themselves
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: is the timeline of his lucidity.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Right, because they point out he wasn't always in a
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: state of psychosis, eating feces. Exactly.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: They have recorded phone calls between Alan, his wife, and
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: his mother on very specific dates, May 10th, May 15th,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: and May 17th.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And on those calls, the state argues he is highly
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: lucid and totally coherent.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: And he allegedly makes these devastating statements like, I wouldn't
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: be telling you I did it if I didn't do it.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's rough.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: The state also points out he confessed again much later
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: in February 2024 at the Wabash facility.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And that was well after he had been medically stabilized.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Right. So the state introduces this medical concept that psychosis
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: ebbs and flows.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Ebbs and flows.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They argue that a person can experience profound psychosis
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: one week, but then profound lucidity the next week.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And therefore, during those lucid windows, his confessions were completely voluntary.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: That's the argument. Crucially, the state emphasizes the total absence
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: of traditional course of state action.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Because there was no detective sitting across the table promising
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: him a transfer to a better cell if he just
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Admitted to the crime. Exactly.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: He just picked up a phone and confessed to his family.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's unpack this because I really have to challenge
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: this ebbing and flowing argument. It feels like comparing a
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: catastrophic mental breakdown to like a bad Wi-Fi signal.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Oof.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Like the state is essentially saying, well, the connection
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: was spotty in April when we had to forcibly inject
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: him with antipsychotics, but he had full bars in May
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: when he called his mom. So that 10-minute conversation is
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: totally fair game.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: It's a wild premise.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Can the legal system really surgically extract a lucid confession
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: from a mind that just days prior required emergency chemical stabilization?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Well, that tension strikes at the absolute core difference between
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: a credible confession and a voluntary confession.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And that's a distinction that often confuses people outside the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: legal profession, right?
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Totally. It's super counterintuitive. Because the jury's job is to
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: decide if a confession is credible, meaning they listen to it,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: they look at the facts, and they decide if they
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: believe the defendant is actually telling the truth.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Right, like, did he really do it?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: But the judge's job is to decide if it is voluntary.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: And voluntariness is a purely legal constitutional question.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if the state used unconstitutional tactics or created
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: unconstitutional conditions to produce the statement, it is legally involuntary.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And if it's legally involuntary, it cannot be shown
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: to the jury at all, even if it is 100%
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: factually true.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Wow. Even if it's true. So the defense is arguing
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: about this horrifying feedback loop. They claim the state locks
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a man in a box, the sensory deprivation and isolation
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: of that box literally breaks his mind. Yeah. And then
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the state harvests the ramblings of that broken mind to
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: secure a murder conviction.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: That's their core argument, yeah.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: So push back on this for me. If keeping a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: presumed innocent man in solitary for 13 months until he
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: requires forced Haldol injections isn't considered coercive state action, what
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: exactly does the state consider coercive?
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Well, the defense basically argues that the environment itself was
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: the interrogation. You don't need a detective asking questions if
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: the walls of the cell are exerting enough psychological pressure
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: to break a human being's grip on reality.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: That is heavy. But, okay, let's assume for a moment
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the defense is right. Let's just assume Allen's confessions are
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the tragic, fabricated byproducts of a shattered mind.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Okay. Tracking.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: That assumption leaves a massive vacuum. The state still has
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: two murdered girls, a highly specific crime scene, and a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: killer on the loose.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Right. The bodies didn't put themselves there.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. If Richard Allen's confessions are removed from the board,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: who fits the profile of this crime? And this brings
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: us to the defense's attempt to introduce alternative suspects and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: their argument that the jury was systematically blocked from seeing
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the real killer.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this part of the appeal is wild. The defense
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: proposed several alternative suspects, but they focused heavily on a
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: man named Brad Holder.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Brad Holder.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Right. And to understand why the defense targeted Holder, we
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: have to look really closely at the crime scene itself, which,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: by the way, both the state and the defense acknowledge
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: was highly unusual.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the phrasing used in the transcripts is bizarre and deliberate.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Very deliberate.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: We are talking about two young victims whose combined weight
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: was roughly 200 pounds. And the defense notes that the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: bodies were physically moved after death. Their clothes were changed
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and large sticks were carefully, deliberately balanced on their bodies.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly grim. And the defense links this bizarre, deliberate
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: staging to Odinism.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Odinism. Yeah. That's a modern pagan religious movement, right?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or specifically ritualistic practices associated with it in certain groups.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: They claim that the sticks balanced on Abby's body formed
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: a specific shape matching a bind rune.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: What exactly is a bind rune?
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: A bind rune is basically a ligature of two or
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: more runes from the runic alphabet. They're combined to create
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: a single symbol, and they're often believed to hold magical
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: or ritualistic significance.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. And the defense's argument hinges on the claim that
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Brad Holder... had a bind rune tattooed on his hand
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: that directly matched the specific stick formation at the crime scene.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, a matching tattoo.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And it gets darker because the defense alleges that Holder
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: posted images on social media depicting dead girls with sticks
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: on them.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is just an insane detail if it's true.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And they also present a timeline argument to back it up.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Right, because Holder worked roughly 30 to 40 minutes away
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: from the Delphi crime scene.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: And according to the defense, his time card shows he
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: clocked out of work.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: At 2.45 p.m. Okay, so he's off the clock at 2.45.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Right. He then checked into a gym at 4.08 p.m.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And the initial encounter with the victims on the Monon
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: High Bridge occurred around 2.13 p.m., right?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So the defense argues this timeline left a perfectly
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: viable window for Holder to have driven to the bridge,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: committed the murders, staged the scene, and made it back
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: to the gym by 4.08.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: So they're saying he had the motive, the tattoo, the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: weird social media and the window of time.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: That's their narrative. And they argue that law enforcement actually
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: noticed this ritualistic angle really early in the investigation.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, so the cops knew about it.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they saw the sticks. They looked into Odin's connections.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: But ultimately, the defense claims they dismissed them due to
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: confirmation bias.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Confirmation bias, meaning they locked on to Richard Allen.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's a psychological trap where investigators lock onto a
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: single suspect and subsequently just ignore or discard any evidence
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: that points away from him.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: But the state pushes back hard with the strict rules
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: of evidence. Because if you've ever watched a real trial,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: you know you can't just stand up and start pointing
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: fingers at random people in the gallery.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: No, you absolutely cannot. There is a very high legal
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: bar for introducing alternate third-party suspects.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And the state argues that to point the finger at
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: someone else, you need a specific, direct, physical connection to
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the crime scene.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Right. This raises an important question about prejudice. The state's
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: position is that the defense is basically trying to send
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: the jury down this confusing, highly prejudicial rabbit hole based
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: on nothing but spooky coincidences. Right.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: A tattoo and some creepy Facebook posts don't put you
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: at the bridge.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And to counter the Odinist theory, the state brought
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: in their own expert, Dr. Turow from the FBI.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: And what did the FBI expert say?
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Dr. Turow testified that the sticks did not, in fact,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: form any clear recognizable runes or symbols.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Just random sticks.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Basically. The state also highlighted that even the defense's own expert, Dr. Perlmutter,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: couldn't definitively say what the sticks meant. He could only
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: state that they appeared to have some kind of general significance.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: That's a bit weak. But the absolute strongest defense the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: state has for excluding Brett Holder is his alibi, right?
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. The alibi is their trump card. The state
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: asserts Holder had a rock-solid confirmed alibi. He was working
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: at a landfill in Buffalo, Indiana.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Which is, what, 25 miles away from Delphi?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, about 25 miles. And the state relies heavily on
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: the testimony of Susan Casise. She was the operations clerk
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: for that landfill.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And she testified that the heavy machinery Holder operated was
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: electronically tracked.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That tracking data, according to the state, proves he
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: was physically operating machinery 25 miles away.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Making it mathematically and physically impossible for him to be
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: at the Monon High Bridge at 2.13 p.m. or at 2.32 p.m.,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: which is the exact time the victim's cell phone stopped moving. OK,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: here's where it gets really interesting for me. I understand
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the state's argument about the alibi, but let's look at
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: this from the perspective of a juror's rights.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: It's the connect the dots problem. If you stare at
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: random stars long enough, you'll see a constellation, right? Sure.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: But if a local man has a tattoo matching the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: bizarre layout of a crime scene, and he is posting
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: pictures of dead girls with sticks on them on social media,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: doesn't a jury of peers have a fundamental right to
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: hear about him?
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: That's the million-dollar question.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Because even if his landfill alibi seems solid on paper,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: shouldn't the jury be the ones to scrutinize Susan Cassis' testimony?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Shouldn't they be allowed to ask if that electronic machinery
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: tracking is... perfectly foolproof?
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: The defense would certainly agree with you. Right.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: By keeping Holder's name entirely out of the courtroom, didn't
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the judge basically pre-decide the facts of the case before
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the jury ever heard them?
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Well, that question cuts right to the heart of the
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: judge's role as a gatekeeper.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: A gatekeeper. Right.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: The state counters that a judge absolutely must filter out
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: evidence that is highly prejudicial but minimally probative.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain those terms, prejudicial and probative.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Prejudicial means it provokes a massive emotional reaction, like hearing
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: about a man with runic tattoos posting pictures of dead girls.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: It makes the jury feel scared or angry.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Got it. And probative.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Minimally probative means it doesn't actually prove he was there,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: especially when physical, electronic tracking data breaks the timeline.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: So it's scary, but it doesn't prove anything.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The judge decided the risk of confusing the jury
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: with a manufactured suspect outweighed the defense's right to present
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: a theory that lacked direct physical evidence.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, but if the trial judge blocked the jury from
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: hearing about third-party suspects like Brad Holder, what were the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: jurors allowed to hear from the people who were actually
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: physically present on the Delphi trails that day?
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And this brings us to a massive clash over eyewitness
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: testimony and a highly controversial excluded composite sketch.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, the sketch.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: This portion of the appeal centers heavily on an eyewitness
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: named Betsy Blair. She was walking on the trails that afternoon,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: and she observed a man on the bridge, the man
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: who would later become infamous worldwide as Bridge Guy. Right.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Everyone has seen that blurry photo. And shortly after the murders,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: while her memory was fresh, Betsy Blair sat down with
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: law enforcement and helped an artist create a composite sketch
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: of the suspect she saw.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, she did.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Now, the defense is absolutely adamant about this sketch. They
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: argue vehemently that the man drawn in that sketch looks
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing like Richard Allen.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Nothing at all.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: In fact, They suggest it looks remarkably like the alternative
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: suspects they were legally barred from mentioning. Right.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: And the procedural error the defense is claiming here is severe.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: The trial judge barred the defense from using this composite
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: sketch as substantive evidence to prove Allen was not the killer.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Which is wild.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It is. And even more controversially, the judge stopped them
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: from using the sketch to impeach Betsy Blair's testimony while
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: she was actually on the witness stand.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: OK, so to impeach a witness, just to clarify for everyone.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: That means to challenge their credibility using their own prior
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: statements or actions.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So the defense wanted to hold up that sketch and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: say to the jury, hey, Betsy Blair just pointed at
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Richard Allen in this courtroom and called him the killer.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: But three days after the murders, she instructed an artist
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: to draw this face, which looks completely different.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Right. Like, why should we believe her memory today, years later,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: over her memory from three days after the crime?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: It's a powerful argument. So why? Why was it blocked?
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the state's argument for excluding the sketch relies entirely
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: on how Betsy Blair testified at the actual trial.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. What did she say?
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: At trial, she unequivocally identified Richard Allen as the man
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: she saw on the bridge. Furthermore, she matched his physical
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: appearance to the brief, terrifying video captured on victim Libby's
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: cell phone.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: The video of Bridge Guy? Yes.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: She based this identification heavily on his clothing, a blue
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: jacket consistent with a Carhartt-style jacket, which, by the way,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Richard Allen voluntarily admitted he was likely wearing that day.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Along with blue jeans and boots or sneakers.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, but if her verbal identification is so strong, why
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: is the state so terrified of the jury seeing the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: sketch she helped create? Like, why fight so hard to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: hide it?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Because the state relies on the strict legal rules of
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: evidence regarding hearsay.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Hearsay.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Yes. They argue that composite sketches are strictly investigative tools.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: They are inherently flawed because of a phenomenon called artist bias.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Artist bias. Like the sketch artist messes it up?
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Sort of. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: the sketch is not a perfect photographic printout from the
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: witness's visual cortex. It is an interpretation filtered through the
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: artist's hands, their stylistic defaults, and their communication with the witness.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So the artist might accidentally lead the witness.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Therefore, legally, the sketch is considered hearsay, an out-of-court
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And because it's hearsay, it cannot be used in a
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: courtroom to definitively include or exclude a suspect.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Okay. Think about this like a police translation. Imagine a
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: witness only speaks Spanish, right? Okay. They give a statement
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to police and a bilingual officer translates it and writes
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: down the English version.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Years later at trial, the witness says, the getaway car
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: was red. But the defense holds up the English police
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: report and says, wait, three days after the crime, this
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: translation says you claim the car was blue.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: That's a great example.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Is it fair for a judge to ban the written
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: translation from the courtroom entirely just because translations can sometimes
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: be flawed?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: It's an excellent analogy because it highlights the profound, scientifically
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: documented unreliability of human memory. Right.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Memory is terrible.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: We know that memory degrades rapidly over time. We also
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: know it is highly susceptible to contamination.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Contamination meaning what?
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Meaning if an eyewitness sees a suspect's face on the
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: evening news for five years, their brain can actually retroactively
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: overwrite their original memory with the news footage.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So she might just be remembering Richard Allen's mugshot,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: not the guy on the bridge?
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: It's entirely possible. But the state's counter-argument is about cross-examination.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: You can aggressively cross-examine Betsy Blair on the stand. You
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: can ask her, are you sure? What was the lighting like? Right.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: You can grill her.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: But you cannot cross-examine a piece of paper. You can't
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: ask a sketch why the jawline is drawn that way
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: or whether the artist pressured the witness to agree on
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: a certain eye shape. That inability to cross-examine is the
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: very foundation of the hearsay rule.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Okay. I hear that. But the defense's point remains incredibly potent.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: A picture is worth a thousand words.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: The state is relying on Betsy Blair's verbal memory, retrieved
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: years after the trauma, to secure a murder conviction. How
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: can the state simultaneously argue that her own visual representation
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: of that exact same memory, created when it was freshest,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: is too fundamentally unreliable for the jury to even glance at?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: It is a massive legal paradox.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: It feels like they want it both ways. A single...
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: unspent bullet casing.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: That's it. Police found an unspent. 40 caliber Winchester casing
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: in the dirt between the victims.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Unspent. Meaning it hadn't even been fired.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Right. It was just cycled through the gun. Much later,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: during a search of Richard Allen's home, police found what
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: the state describes as a keepsake box tucked away in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: a closet. Okay. Inside this box, mingled with miscellaneous items,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: was one unspent. 40 caliber Winchester round.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: So they have an unspent bullet at the scene and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a bullet of the same caliber at his house.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Yes. And the state brought in a forensics expert, Ms. Oberg,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: who testified that she used microscopic tool mark analysis to
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: match the casing found at the crime scene directly to
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Richard Allen's specific gun.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Okay. For those who aren't firearms experts, let's break down
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: tool mark analysis. It's the theory that when a gun
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: cycles around, even if it isn't fired, The metal components,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: like the ejector or the firing pin, leave microscopic, unique
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: scratches on the brass casing.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: And the state argued these scratches are as unique as
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a fingerprint?
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Right, that they can match it to one single gun
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: on Earth. But the defense fought this premise aggressively.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: As they should.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: They attempted to call their own expert, a man named
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Richard Tobin. Now, Tobin is not a traditional firearms examiner.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: He is a metallurgist.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: A metallurgist?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Someone who studies metals? Yes.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: And his intended testimony was designed to be explosive. He
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: planned to tell the jury that matching an unspent casing
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: found in the dirt to a specific firearm is in
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: his professional opinion, junk science.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Junk science.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: He actually intended to compare the entire methodology of tool
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: mark analysis to astrology.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. He was going to call the state's main physical
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: evidence astrology. But the jury never heard the word astrology,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: did they?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: No, they did not.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: The trial court blocked Tobin's testimony entirely.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Blocked him.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And the defense pointed out during the appeal that the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Virginia Supreme Court had previously ruled, in a completely different case,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: that excluding this exact same expert, Richard Tobin, was a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: reversible error. Right.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Another Supreme Court said, you have to let this guy speak.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: The state of Indiana, however, held firm.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: What was their argument?
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Their argument is that firearms identification is absolutely not junk science.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: They argue it has been tested, deemed highly reliable, and
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: has been admissible in Indiana courts for over a century.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Over a hundred years? Yeah.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, they attack Tobin's credentials for this specific task. They
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: argue a metallurgist studies the properties of metals generally, whereas
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: a firearms examiner is specifically trained in the mechanical interaction
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: between a gun and ammunition.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a fair distinction.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And the state highlighted that Tobin hadn't even examined the
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: specific bullet or casing in the Delphi case.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? If he hadn't examined the specific bullet, what
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: was his legal purpose for even being there?
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Well, the state argued Tobin's only goal was to put
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: the entire field of forensic ballistics on trial.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So he wasn't there to talk about Richard Allen's gun.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: He was there to say the whole science is fake. Exactly.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: They argued this would hopelessly confuse the jury, turning a
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: murder trial into an abstract science symposium.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: I can see how a judge would want to avoid that.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Right. And it is worth noting that the judge did
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: allow the defense to call a different expert, a Dr. Warren.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. Who is Dr.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Warren? Dr. Warren is an actual firearms examiner, and he
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: was allowed to critique the state's specific methodology and point
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: out the known error rates in ballistics matching.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: So they didn't block all defense experts, just the guy
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: calling it astrology?
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Correct. This represents a classic battle of the experts, but
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: it really exposes a fundamental mechanism of how courts handle science.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: It exposes the Daubert Standard.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Daubert Standard. Let's get into that.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: This is the legal standard used by judges to determine
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: whether an expert witness's scientific testimony is based on reasoning
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: or methodology that is actually scientifically valid.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Under Daubert, the judge is the ultimate gatekeeper. They look
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: at whether a technique has been peer-reviewed, its known error rate,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: and whether it has widespread acceptance in the relevant scientific community.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: So the judge in this case decided that traditional ballistics
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: passes the Daubert test while sweeping claims that the entire
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: field is astrology. do not belong in front of a jury.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Precisely. They let the science in, but block the guy
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: trying to burn the building down.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: But the defense makes an incredibly pragmatic, non-scientific point here,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: which I love.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: They argue, go knock on doors in rural Carroll County, Indiana.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It is highly probable that 60% of the men living
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: there own a. 40 caliber Winchester round.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: It's true. It is an incredibly common, mass-produced item.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Right. And conveniently, they point out, Brad Holder, the Odinist
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: alternate suspect the jury wasn't allowed to hear about, also
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: owned that exact same caliber of ammunition.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Which is a brilliant tactical move by the defense. They
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: are systematically trying to dilute the uniqueness of the state's
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: physical evidence.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Finding a common brand of bullet in a rural community?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Isn't the definitive silver bullet the state wants the jury
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: to believe it is?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: And honestly, the state argues they've accepted toolmark analysis for
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: 100 years. But just because courts accepted something in 1924
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it holds up to the scientific scrutiny of 2024.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Science changes.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Using toolmarks on an unspent casing to identify one
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: specific gun feels less like mapping the human genome and
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: more like Trying to identify a specific make and model
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of a car by looking at a single scratch left
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: on a concrete highway guardrail.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: That's a vivid way to picture it. And the national
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: scientific community has been debating the absolute certainty of tool
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: mark analysis for a decade.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Right. So shouldn't a jury be allowed to hear from
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a metallurgist who walks into the courtroom and says the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: emperor has no clothes?
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: That is the perpetual tension of the judge's gatekeeper role.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: If the judge lets every single academic critic into the courtroom,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: trials become endlessly bogged down in theoretical debates and nothing
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: gets resolved.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you never get a verdict.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: But if a judge locks the gate too tightly, relying
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: solely on a century of tradition, they might be shielding
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: the jury from legitimate, vital scientific evolution.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we've dissected the confessions born in solitary confinement.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: We've looked at the excluded alternate suspects and their alibis.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: We've examined the invisible composite sketch and the fiercely debated ballistics.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of moving parts.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It is. So what is the connective tissue that binds
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: all of these disparate, confusing pieces together into a coherent narrative?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: It is the timeline.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: The timeline.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: The timeline is the spine of the entire case. And
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: according to both the defense and the state, the other
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: side's timeline is built on a foundation of deliberate lies.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's break down the timeline.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: The state argues that their timeline is actually the most
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: devastating piece of circumstantial evidence they possess. Let's look at
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: the geography and the minutes.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Go for it.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Initially, right after the murders in 2017, Richard Allen voluntarily
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: approached the police. He told them he was walking on
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: the trails that day around 1.30 p.m.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: He volunteered that information? Yes.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And the state corroborated this admission with video from a
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: local business, the Hoosier Harvest Store, which showed a vehicle
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: matching Allen's passing by at exactly 1.27 p.m.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that matches up perfectly. Right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Witnesses saw him on the trails, and crucially, Allen admitted
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: to standing on the first platform of the Monon High Bridge.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: So he voluntarily places himself at the exact scene of
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the crime. Yes.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: But the state points to a critical shift that occurred
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: in 2023 when Allen was interviewed again.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Six years later.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Right. According to the state, Allen suddenly changed his story.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: He now claimed he was on the trails from 2.30 p.m.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: To 3.30 p.m. Wait, why is a one-hour shift in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: his memory so legally devastating? I mean, it had been
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: six years. People forget times.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Because of the precise window of the crime, the victims,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Abby and Libby, were confronted on the bridge at approximately 2.13 p.m.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: By shifting his timeline backward to 2.30 p.m., the state
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: argues Allen was exhibiting clear consciousness of guilt.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Consciousness of guilt.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: He realized the time of the murders, and he was
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: attempting to retroactively remove himself from that exact window.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense. Like... I wasn't there at 2.15.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't get there till 2.30. Exactly.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: The state also points to this bizarre issue with his
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: cell phones. During the search of Allen's house, police collected devices.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: They found what they described as virtually every old cell
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: phone he had ever owned over the years.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Except.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Except the only phone mysteriously missing from the collection was
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the specific 2017 phone he had in his pocket on
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: the trails the day of the murders.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Of course. It's always the one phone you actually need
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: that goes missing.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Furthermore, the state alleges that during this police search,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Allen was overheard muttering the phrase, it's over.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. Consciousness of guilt is a powerful narrative for a jury.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: But the defense attacks the state's timeline with equal ferocity,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: don't they?
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. They accuse the state of essentially fabricating elements
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: of the timeline to make the puzzle pieces fit, specifically
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: focusing on a man named Weber and his van.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Weber's van. Let's get into that.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: The defense alleges that the state's narrative of the crime
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: relied heavily on the theory that Weber's van driving by
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: the trail scared the killer, causing him to urgently force
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: the girls down the hill and move their bodies.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: So the van was the catalyst for the killer moving quickly.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: That was the theory. But the defense claims that the
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: FBI had previously cleared Weber using cell phone ping data.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Cell phone pings. That shows which local cell towers a
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: phone is connecting to, providing a rough geographic location, At
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: a specific minute.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the defense argues this ping data proves Weber's
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: van wasn't even in the vicinity at that specific time.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: So if Weber's van wasn't there to scare the killer.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Then the defense argues the state's entire theory of why
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: and when the bodies were moved completely collapses.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: And they accuse the state of knowingly presenting a false
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: timeline to the jury just to hide this collapse.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is their claim.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And then the defense introduces an incredibly strange, highly technical
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: detail about a headphone jack.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember reading this in the transcript. It's so weird.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: The defense points to digital extraction data from Libby's cell phone,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: which was found underneath one of the bodies. The data
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: shows that a headphone jack was connected to the phone
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: for five solid hours with absolutely no movement recorded by
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the phone's sensors.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Zero movement. The defense argues that the state's theory of
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: how the killer violently interacted with the scene, you know,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Forcing the girls down a steep hill, murdering them, and
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: elaborately posing them is completely implausible if you factor in
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: this static, connected headphone jack, registering zero movement for five
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: hours during the supposed window of the crime.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so we have a mountain of contradictory evidence.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: The state has confessions, a ballistics match, and a changed timeline.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: The defense has 13 months of solitary confinement, alternate suspects,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: a contradictory sketch, and static headphone data.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: It's a mess.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: From an appellate perspective, how did judges resolve this massive
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: collision of narratives?
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Well, the state attempts to bypass the collision entirely by
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: relying on a legal doctrine called harmless error.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Harmless error.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: The state's position is essentially a massive fallback plan. They
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: say even if the trial judge made mistakes, even if
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the solitary confinement confessions should have been legally suppressed, Even
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: if the metallurgist should have been allowed to testify about astrology,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: it ultimately doesn't matter.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Wait, it doesn't matter?
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: The error is harmless because the circumstantial evidence, his changing timeline,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: the missing 2017 phone, the fact that he admits he
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: was on the bridge, is so overwhelmingly powerful that the
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: jury would have convicted him anyway.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to aggressively push back on this harmless
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: error doctrine. Go ahead. Because it's like a game of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: musical chairs. When the music stops at 2.13 p.m., someone
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: is left standing on that bridge. And if the state's
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: circumstantial timeline is genuinely as rock-solid and overwhelming as they
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: confidently claim, why did they fight so incredibly, desperately hard
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: to include those confessions?
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: That's the million-dollar question.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Right. If you have a flawless, undeniable timeline of movement,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: you do not need to rely on the horrific, feces-eating
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: ramblings of a man broken by a year in solitary confinement.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: That's a very fair point.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Does the sheer desperation to include those highly questionable confessions
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: reveal that the state secretly knows their circumstantial timeline is
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: actually far weaker than they are willing to admit?
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: And that is the exact vulnerability the defense is trying
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: to expose to the appellate judges. The defense argues that
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: you simply cannot unring the psychological bell of a confession.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: No, you can't.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Once a jury hears a human being say the words,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: I did it, they stop doing the math.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: They stop looking at cell phone pings. They stop caring
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: about static headphone jacks and they stop scrutinizing timelines. If
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: a confession was obtained unconstitutionally, the defense argues, there is
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: no such thing as harmless error because the confession poisons
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: the entire jury process.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: It infects everything.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Which brings us right back to the central theme of
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: this entire deep dive. What we are witnessing in these
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: appellate transcripts isn't just a true crime debate over whether
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Richard Allen is the bridge guy. We are witnessing a
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: foundational structural debate that about the mechanics of American justice.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Did the trial judge abuse her immense gatekeeping discretion by
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: blocking the jury from seeing the alternate suspect sketch? From
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: hearing the name Brad Holter? From hearing a metallurgist criticize
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: a century-old forensic technique?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, huge questions.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: And perhaps most profoundly, did the state cross a hard
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: constitutional line by utilizing confessions born in the darkest, most
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: degrading depths of solitary confinement?
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Remember, The appellate judges reviewing this case are not a
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: second jury. They don't get to look at the stick
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: formations and decide for themselves if it's a runic symbol.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: No, they don't do that at all.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: They have to decide if the process of the trial
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: was so flawed, so restricted, and so potentially biased against
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the defendant that the final verdict simply cannot be trusted
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: to be accurate.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Think of it like this. They are inspecting the foundation
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: of the house. If the concrete is cracked, it doesn't
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: matter how nice the living room looks. The house has
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: to be rebuilt.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: That's a perfect way to end it. I want to
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: leave you with a final thought to mull over. We
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: live in an era entirely defined by a true crime obsession.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: We demand, as a society, that cold cases be solved.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: We do. We want answers.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: We demand that answers be found and that monsters be
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: put away. It is a righteous, completely understandable demand. But
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: if in our desperation for those answers, we allow the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: justice system to bend its own rules, to lower its
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: scientific standards, and to exploit profound mental breakdowns just to
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: secure a conviction, are we actually finding the truth?
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Or are we just finding a convenient way to close
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: a file?
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly. What happens to the finality of justice if the
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: relentless pursuit of closure is is allowed to override the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: fundamental guarantee of a fair trial.