Richard Allen’s attorneys float suggestion that the court holds Delphi prosecutor in criminal contempt

DELPHI, Ind. — In a fiery rebuttal, the attorneys representing convicted murderer Richard Allen floated the idea that Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland should be held in criminal contempt for releasing crime scene photographs from the Delphi murders.

Last week, McLeland released photographs of Libby German’s iPhone 6s which had previously never been seen outside the courtroom. These images were included as part of the state’s rebuke to claims made by Allen’s defense team, who continue to push for the murder conviction against their client to be vacated.

Allen was found guilty in November of murdering Libby German and her best friend, Abby Williams, in February 2017 in Delphi. The high-profile case garnered national attention and ended with Allen being convicted by a jury and sentenced to 130 years in prison.

Allen’s defense team vowed to appeal the conviction and reignited debates around the case by filing a Motion to Correct Errors. This motion pushed for Allen’s conviction to be vacated for various reasons, including a purported confession made by Ron Logan — the owner of the property where the girls’ bodies were found — and disputes about the state’s timeline surrounding a passing van that proved key in the case.

McLeland fired back against the Motion to Correct Errors with his own fiery rebuttal last week. The legal sparring match continues with the defense once again punching back at McLeland — crying foul about his responses and claims and even floating the idea that the court should hold McLeland in criminal contempt.

“The Court might want to consider whether to hold Mr. McLeland in direct criminal contempt for publicly filing crime-scene photographs the Court ordered sealed at Mr. McLeland’s own request,” Allen’s defense team mused in their most recent filing. “Alternatively… the Court might consider issuing a rule to show cause why Mr. McLeland should not be held in indirect criminal contempt for his willful violation of an order of this Court.”

It is worth noting that McLeland once called for Allen’s attorneys to be held in contempt in part due to an evidence leak from the defense attorney’s office which led to crime scene photographs making their way online.

The suggestion of criminal sanctions against the prosecutor is floated as a footnote in attorney Andrew Baldwin’s latest motion filed on behalf of his client, Richard Allen. The motion calls upon the court to strike McLeland’s rebuttal from the record while disputing the claims made by McLeland in response to the Motion to Correct Errors.

Baldwin also once more pushed for Allen’s murder convictions to be vacated.

One of the main sticking points of Baldwin’s latest filing is McLeland’s claim that the Motion to Correct Errors be thrown out due to no newly discovered evidence being presented. McLeland argued multiple times in his rebuttal that information brought forth by the defense team — including the alleged confession made by Logan — was not new and had always been at the disposal of the defense team by being included in discovery materials.

“The simplest answer is that a Motion to Correct Error only applies to newly discovered evidence,” McLeland wrote. “From the Defense’s own admissions this is not newly discovered evidence but rather evidence they had been provided long before trial.”

But Baldwin said McLeland’s assertion is erroneous and argues that trial rule allows for a Motion to Correct Errors to be filed “based upon evidence outside the record.” Logan’s purported confession, disputes in the white van timeline, arguments about German’s phone: Baldwin argues these all fall within “evidence outside the record” due to never being presented in court.

But McLeland already argued previously that the defense team chose not to present this information in court despite having it at their disposal — including Logan’s alleged confession to an inmate named Ricci Davis.

“The defense team, consisting of three experienced defense trial attorneys, made a choice not to fully explore or present the Ricci Davis claim,” McLeland wrote.

This legal sparring raises questions about if a defense team can purposely not present evidence into the record and then later invoke that same unpresented evidence as cause for a conviction to be overturned.

But the defense team also claimed some of this evidence wasn’t provided to Allen’s attorneys.

In the most recent filing, the defense claimed to have not seen any exhibits that mention Davis taking a polygraph test, which McLeland claimed the inmate failed “miserably.”

The defense team also argued that McLeland’s rebuttal mixed up claims about Logan’s alleged confession. McLeland stated part of the purported confession included Logan telling Davis he burned the girls’ clothes in a firepit. But the defense pointed out the original claim stated Logan told Davis he burned his own clothes in the pit, not the girls.

McLeland pointed out in his rebuttal that Logan told Davis he took the battery out of Libby’s phone, which doesn’t align with physical evidence and discredits the confession. But the defense team claims they have not seen any exhibits that mention Logan confessing to removing the phone battery.

“While the Court might take Mr. McLeland’s misstatement of fact about the burning of the clothes as simply mix-up on his part, either Mr. McLeland is making up the allegation about Logan removing battery from phone out of whole cloth, or he has access to information about Ron Logan’s confessions to Ricci Davis he has not shared with the defense,” Baldwin wrote.