Delphi defense lawyers argue that murder suspect was not informed of Miranda rights

Defense attorneys for the man accused of killing two Delphi, Indiana, teens in 2017 don’t want jurors to hear his recorded police interrogation, saying he was never read his Miranda Rights.

In a motion filed on Monday, defense attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi argued that their client, Richard Allen, had his civil rights violated during that interrogation, Fox 59 reported. In addition to not reading him his Miranda Rights, the attorneys argue that Indiana State Police officials lied to Allen during that interrogation.

Allen, 50, has been charged with kidnapping and killing 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German, whose bodies were found off a hiking trail in Delphi, Indiana, back in 2017.

The latest filing claims that on October 13, 2022, Allen and his wife drove to the police station to pick up a car that had been seized nearly two weeks earlier as part of the investigation into Allen’s involvement in the teens’ deaths. When they arrived, the defense attorneys say, Allen was separated from his wife and questioned without being read his Miranda Rights or told he was free to leave at any time or that the interview was being recorded, Fox reported.

Baldwin and Rozzi also argue that the beginning of the recorded interview either never existed or has disappeared in the years since.

“In this case, either (a) the camera was only turned on after they were already minutes into the interview,” the latest filing says. “Or (b) the camera was recording the entire time, but the beginning of the interview was later edited out before being turned over to defense.”

Due to these issues, the defense attorneys say they don’t want jurors at Allen’s upcoming trial to hear the interview. Included in the interview are statements from police claiming to have expert testimony linking Allen to evidence found at the crime scene and a trooper telling him, “You’re guilty, and I know it, and I’m gonna f***ing prove it.”

The filing comes just days after Baldwin and Rozzi requested to have Allen’s prison confessions suppressed from the jury as well.

The attorneys alleged that Allen did not make the comments voluntarily and was mentally ill at the time. Rozzi said in a motion to suppress statements filed Thursday that prison officials put inmates at Allen’s cell door and had them keep logs of everything Allen said and did. Rozzi said that some of those inmates actively questioned Allen, which Rozzi said amounts to a “sustained form of interrogation; one that lasted more than five months before he was finally broken.”

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Rozzi argued in another filing that allowing those statements to be used in Allen’s trial would violate his constitutional rights, since he didn’t have an attorney present when he made the comments.

Further, Rozzi said Allen “slipped into a state of psychosis plagued with grossly disorganized, delusional, paranoid and highly dysfunctional behavior” while he was in prison. This behavior included “periods of not sleeping for days, paranoia, stripping off his clothes, drinking toilet water, covering himself with and eating his own feces, and many other socially unacceptable behaviors.”

The defense attorneys also argued that Allen’s alleged confessions don’t even align with the evidence from the crime scene, meaning they can’t be accurate.

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