The Delphi Murders: A Motion for Continuance and Other Updates

[00:00:00] Content Warning, This Episode Contains Discussion of the Murder of Two Girls Well, since last we spoke about the Richard Allen case, there have been some new filings and also there's been some other interesting developments. One of Richard Allen's former

[00:00:17] attorneys actually gave an interview to Barbara McDonald of CORE TV where he said something that we found very interesting. So we're going to take a few moments here today. We're going to go over these new filings and we're also going to discuss what Mr.

[00:00:33] Labrado said in that interview. My name is Ania Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reported interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:00:51] And this is The Delphi Murders, A Motion for Continuance and Other Updates. So shall we start out by discussing this interview that William Labrado gave to CORE TV's Barbara McDonald? I think we should. And let's say at the outset that we will include the link to this interview

[00:01:53] in our show notes so you can read all of it. We're just going to highlight a relatively brief portion of it. Yeah, I think there were some things that we had seen from that that stood out to us that we didn't really see that much discussion around.

[00:02:09] And so I think this is what I perhaps found most interesting. You know, Labrado says he thinks he's innocent. He seems like a nice guy. None of that's that surprising coming from a defense attorney that's not...

[00:02:22] Like it would be pretty shocking if somebody came out and said I think he's actually guilty after this. That would be really poor form and also just really not what a defense attorney would be expected to do. Exactly.

[00:02:39] So a lot of the stuff just struck us as kind of what you typically hear. One wrinkle that stood out to me about some of Labrado's comments had to do with the October 11th letter that Richard Allen signed and sent to the court saying that he wanted

[00:02:57] to keep his attorneys. And this letter is crucial because so much of what we've been going through the last few months has been around the idea that Richard Allen really wanted to keep Baldwin and Rosie as his attorneys.

[00:03:13] And if he wasn't allowed to keep them, that was a violation of his rights in the minds of his representatives. So this letter in which he asserts that that is what he wants and that he makes this assertion knowing everything, this is crucially important.

[00:03:30] So Mark Lehman who is part of his team that went to the Indiana Supreme Court even stressed that we know exactly what Richard Allen wants because of the October 11th letter. That is the crux of knowing what he wants.

[00:03:45] And so I mean, I think that concerns me in the sense that the letter only gets into a very, very abbreviated version of events of what happened with the leak. So if Richard Allen's only understanding of the situation comes in the form of what's

[00:04:00] in that letter, it is not a full understanding of what happened. Now let's keep this in mind. It's possible that he knows everything, that he's been told everything and the letter was just kept brief to kind of go over the main points. And in that case, that's fine.

[00:04:14] There's no issues there because then he is informed. But what Labrado indicated was I'll read his quote here. He didn't write the letter. Mr. Rosie prepared the letter and had Mr. Allen sign is my understanding it was typed. And I'm assuming Mr.

[00:04:30] Allen doesn't have access to a computer or a typewriter in the Department of Corrections. OK, so first of all, it's not shocking that somebody may sign a letter prepared for them by that. That's totally normal. That's totally normal. There's nothing wrong with that.

[00:04:46] Obviously we would be have a better idea of what's in Richard Allen's mind if he wrote the letter himself. But if you've ever had an attorney, you probably signed documents that they prepared for you that you did not write yourself.

[00:05:01] And even if you don't have an attorney, I'm sure when you use your computer and you go to different websites, there's often user agreements which you probably signed and agreed to without preparing them yourself or even reading them.

[00:05:15] But it does get to the question here that we have is was Richard Allen's decision to want to keep these attorneys, was it in an informed choice? And the evidence we have is this letter which was prepared for him by someone else.

[00:05:33] And that frankly downplayed a lot of what happened in my view or at the very least skimmed over a lot of things. This really in my mind underscores, I'll say, the failure of Judge Gold

[00:05:46] to hold a hearing and to have some sort of back and forth with Richard Allen. I really feel it was her responsibility as the judicial officer here to make sure that he fully understood all of this.

[00:06:02] And the fact that there is still some ambiguity here about what Richard Allen understands is entirely her fault for not putting him on the record and informing him of everything and making sure he understood it.

[00:06:16] Because at the end of the day, this whole situation is about this man. He is facing the fight of his life. And I don't care. It doesn't matter what anybody thinks about whether he's guilty or whether he's innocent.

[00:06:28] He deserves a fair trial and deserves to be able to make informed choices going into that trial. And I don't know nothing. There's no evidence that he knows everything at this point. There's no evidence that he doesn't know anything like it's possible that he just,

[00:06:44] you know, Rosie came up, hey, here's everything that happened. I wrote a letter summing it up. Will you sign this? Sure. If that happened, no problem. He's making an informed choice. But I don't think we can rely on him signing a letter presented to him

[00:06:58] that barely describes the situation and the extent of it as some sort of proof that he is a fully informed defendant going into this. And it really concerns me. And I had just said, and it was true that there's no real evidence

[00:07:11] that his decisions were not fully informed. At least that's how things were until Labrado gave this interview. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So why don't you read something else? Labrado said in this interview, which really is troubling to me.

[00:07:30] He may have been thinking that he and his wife were going to have to hire private attorneys or he wasn't going to have representation. I don't know, but that's strictly my opinion, my belief based on things I've seen and heard. Oh, my goodness. So let's unpack this.

[00:07:43] Attorney Labrado, who represented Richard Allen is saying that he thinks that there is a chance that the whole reason Richard Allen was so insistent on keeping Rosie involved when as his attorneys is because he believed that if they were dismissed,

[00:08:00] he would have to pay for a new set of attorneys out of his own pocket, which is not true. He still would have been invited with other public defenders. So he is saying that in his mind, he believes that Richard Allen's decision to want to keep Rosie

[00:08:17] involved when was an uninformed decision based upon a misunderstanding of the underlying facts by Richard Allen. And if that is the case, it just makes everything that's happened in a sense really even more of an upsetting farce and waste of time.

[00:08:36] I'm going to say this to me if he's not getting a full picture, whether that's through people, whoever that is misleading him, whether that's just through lack of information, people not informing him. I don't see why he can't make an argument later on,

[00:08:56] regardless of what was said at the oral arguments at the end of Supreme Court, why he can't make an argument later on saying, listen, I was put in this position. I had no idea what was going on and maybe even had some misleading things said.

[00:09:11] And I therefore made a choice and did not receive effective representation. I don't see why he can argue that if that's the case. I think that's a good point. And the whole issue of does he have right of choice of counsel?

[00:09:30] If he's basing that choice on misunderstandings or not really fully understanding things, that's a whole separate argument to have. And I just want to know, where did he get that idea? Where did he get the idea that he would have to then pay for it?

[00:09:45] Was that something some uninformed prison house lawyer told him? Was that something that his family maybe misunderstood something and conveyed that to him? Where is he getting that? That's a very specific assumption. And I don't know. I just I would be very curious about who told him that.

[00:10:05] And I would be very curious is as to why Labrado believes that that is what Richard Allen believes. And I would be. And again, all of this underscores Judge Gold really messed up badly here. I'll be blunt. She messed up badly.

[00:10:20] She should have gotten Richard Allen on the record. She should have made sure he understood all of this stuff. And if she had done so, so much of this stuff could potentially be avoided. We should not be sitting here weeks after the Supreme Court hearing,

[00:10:35] still trying to figure out what was in Richard Allen's head and whether or not his decision to want to keep these lawyers was an informed one or an uninformed one. That is just an appalling set of affairs in my mind.

[00:10:47] And so William Labrado and Robert Scrimman are professionals. I imagine that if they had the sense that he was thinking something inaccurate, that they would have corrected him. But if he still was making decisions based on that or maybe not even being fully

[00:11:01] transparent with what he was thinking with his new attorneys, that's even more concerning because it speaks to the level of. Entrenched belief that happened there. And I don't I don't know how a person comes to that sort of very

[00:11:15] decisive thought process without there being some something weird going on there. Yeah, exactly. I'm very concerned. This this is this is not the sort of thing that should be happening in a high profile case. Everything should be going by the book.

[00:11:34] In terms of this man's rights, in terms of his representation, in terms of how everything is dealt with. And at this point, there just seems to be a lot of things going, you know, the books been thrown out of, you know, 30 story window.

[00:11:48] And it's like that's not acceptable. Richard Allen deserves to have his rights protected. Abby and Libby deserve justice and justice for them requires having a fair trial. Oh, for me, I mean, it's like who's Richard Allen? I mean, that's that's the extent that we've gotten to.

[00:12:09] There's there's been almost a dismissal of him from the center of this case and a ridiculous legal courtroom drama has has taken over the center stage. And it's not meant to be like that. That's not normal. That's not how things are supposed to run.

[00:12:26] And it makes me very concerned because he at the end of the day, this is this is his life. This is a man's life we're talking about. And he deserves to be making fully informed choices. Maybe maybe he is fully informed.

[00:12:42] I I'm not going to say that there's no way he is. It's possible he is. But the typewriter comment combined with. An attorney's understanding that maybe this man is not as informed as you've been led to believe as we've been led to believe makes

[00:12:58] just it's sending alarm bells off because that's not fair to him. That is not fair to Richard Allen. And it's not fair to Abby and Libby and their families because the more problems there are with the trial of Richard Allen,

[00:13:13] the greater the chance is that we're going to have to do this again and again. And the greater the chance that there's not going to be a period written at the end of the story that is just going to drag on and on for years.

[00:13:28] And that is something which certainly none of us following the case want. No. So now let's look at some of the latest filings in the case and discuss their implications. One filing we haven't discussed, and I think we don't only need to discuss it

[00:13:44] more than more than just a sentence or two. We talked about William Labrado and Mr. Scrimmon. They were appointed to this case when Baldwin and Rosie were taken off the case. When Rosie and Baldwin were restored to the case,

[00:14:00] there was no need to have four attorneys on the case. And so Labrado and Scrimmon filed motions to withdraw, which Judge Groll signed and accepted. So they are no longer attorneys of record for Richard Allen. OK, makes sense. Keeping things moving.

[00:14:22] The other interesting filing, and it is interesting indeed, is a motion for continuance that was filed by Brad Rosie. This pertains to there was a hearing scheduled by Judge Gould to take place on February 12th at 9 AM in Allen County

[00:14:42] to discuss the contempt motion filed by Nick McLean and also the prosecutor's motion to amend the charges. And obviously by just saying it's a motion for continuance, you know what Rosie is asking for there? He's saying let's delay this.

[00:15:01] We don't want to have this hearing on the 12th. And let's get into some of his reasons for that. He's indicating that when President Pecari McLean filed this information or motion for contemptuous conduct, he is obviously alleging that attorneys Rosie and Baldwin participated in this conduct.

[00:15:28] And. Well, for one thing, Rosie says, we need time to know what the prosecutor knows. We were entitled to get discovery because the prosecutor made some allegations against us. We deserve to know the evidence for those allegations. We deserve to know all of this before we come in

[00:15:52] and have a hearing where we respond to it. Yeah, that makes sense. If this accusation is going around, we need to be able to defend ourselves. He also indicates this is more of a simple procedural thing. You didn't contact us when you scheduled this

[00:16:16] and I actually will be out of state at this time. So he's out of state on February 12th on personal matters, he says. So it's not a it's not a professional conflict, but I don't know, family vacation, something like that. And he says, yeah, contempt charges,

[00:16:31] those could have potentially serious consequences for me up to and including jail time. So I should have the right be prior to this hearing to consult with an attorney, be able to fully inform the attorney of all these charges so we can plan strategy.

[00:16:49] And that's going to take more time than just this week or so. You've given us. So we're going to get yet another attorney in the case, once again, representing one of the defense attorneys, which is, you know, it's kind of an unusual situation.

[00:17:01] Yes, he also says that he believes that there should be a separate special judge appointed to hear these contempt charges and that also should take time. He believes also that since he and Baldwin have earlier asked Judge Gull to recuse herself, that that motion should actually

[00:17:23] be ruled on prior to anything else. The argument being that if Judge Gull does indeed decide to recuse herself, it's somehow absurd for her to make decisions on motions on Monday and then say, recuse yourself from the case altogether on Tuesday.

[00:17:44] If she's going to recuse herself, it would make more sense for the new judge to come in first and make determinations on these new motions. One interesting paragraph gets into the current status of the relationship between the defense team and prosecutor Nicholas McClendon.

[00:18:02] This was an interesting little tidbit. Why don't you spill the tea? Spill the tea. Oh my goodness, you and your slang. So this indicates that according to Rosie, at least, that McClendon has told Rosie and Baldwin that he will quote

[00:18:20] no longer engage in telephonic communications with them in this case. And every every communication that they've been having so recently has been through email. So he doesn't say why Nick McClendon. Oh, I wonder why he doesn't say why Nick McClendon doesn't want to have phone calls with him.

[00:18:40] Why he wants it all to be in writing via email. We can speculate. Yeah, the speculation would be that when you get everything in writing then nobody can twist things around later on. And we've also all heard this account of some sort of Zoom meeting

[00:18:57] that took place after the revelation of the leaked photographs, where at some point in this meeting, Judge Goal is said to have said something like prosecutor McClendon, what do you think should happen? And he has said to have responded something like I think they

[00:19:12] should be taken off the case. And so this is something that was said in the meeting and perhaps it would make more sense for there to be a written record of such communication. It tells you that trust has irrevocably broken down.

[00:19:26] We talked about how trust between the defense attorneys and Judge Goal and vice versa has broken down, but the other party in this McClendon obviously by requiring somebody to put everything they need to say in writing and by putting everything in writing himself is indicating that

[00:19:43] they've completely lost faith in these people to be honest and to accurately convey information later on. So it's a strategy to be able to pull up as the kids say receipts in case things get cleaned out.

[00:19:57] I have something in writing I can share with you to prove it. And obviously if Anya and I got to the point where I said Anya from now on, I don't want to talk to you. If you have anything to say to me, send me an email.

[00:20:16] No one who heard that would think Kevin and Anya have a really healthy relationship now. This is going great. Definitely unusual in most the cases we've covered and most of the defense attorneys and prosecutors we've talked to. There's more of a collegial vibe. That's not always the case.

[00:20:34] Things can get very contentious. I'm not saying that that never happens. But I think typically you have more of a sense of, you know, we're on different sides of this, but we can understand where each other is coming from.

[00:20:46] Sometimes you have defense attorneys who go on to become prosecutors. Sometimes you have prosecutors who leave and start being defense attorneys. So there's like kind of a common, you know, DNA there. There's a common, you know, we kind of are two sides of the same coin.

[00:21:00] But in this case, after the leak, when you have a situation where a leak occurs after, you know, years and years and it has such a destructive effect. And there's a question about what exactly is one side passing on to other people?

[00:21:18] Maybe maybe the keeping everything in writing is just a way to make sure that everything is a you can be careful about what you say and not not have to worry about the internet sleuth getting ahold of it. So that's the gist of this.

[00:21:33] I wanted you have a reaction to the strength of Rosie's arguments. I think he makes good arguments. I think that it makes sense to continue. And I think that it's a serious charge and they should be allowed to respond to it and, you know, deal with it.

[00:21:52] So I think it would make sense for it to be continued. I don't know why they wouldn't continue it at this point. I think it would look really bad if you didn't continue it at this point. I guess I'll say that it is a very serious

[00:22:02] charge. Rosie quotes from the documents. McLean filed. He says, well, the information does not specifically contain a prayer for relief. The pleading references the revictimization of the victims' families, which is immeasurable and incurable. This verbiage is grounded in criminal contempt. So this is very serious.

[00:22:26] You in the interests of fairness, you need to make sure that Rosie is able to prepare for this. You that's just. That's just part of the way the process works. He is entitled to discovery and have a meaningful consultation with a qualified attorney. I don't like making predictions.

[00:22:51] And certainly I've been shocked before, but it would be shocking to me if Judge Gold did not grant this motion for continuance. You know, the law, the legal process here is not supposed to be like people jumping around a corner and yelling surprise. It's supposed to be.

[00:23:05] Things happening in a methodical way and people having time to respond to things. So I would be shocked too. And it's also a little surprising that Judge Gold did not reach out behind the scenes and try to say to the defense attorneys

[00:23:20] into the prosecution when would be a good time for this hearing. We saw her do that actually from the bench before. When she would pull out her calendar and say, Oh, does this time work or does this time work?

[00:23:32] And obviously I don't know what Rosie's business is out of state, but it's personal business that I presume he's had planned for a while. I don't think it would be reasonable to expect him to cancel that

[00:23:46] or neglect his duties to his other clients to just rush in and do this. So they filed one version of this and it was pretty much mostly Rosie related verbiage from Rosie. And then they filed another one.

[00:23:58] They filed a shorter version this morning, which was signed by both men. But basically making the same arguments that this needs to be continued. Conflicts with our schedule, we need to prep. Yeah, I mean, just, you know, it's disappointing to see even more delays

[00:24:19] take on take over this case. But that's where we are. I don't think there's much hope for writing the ship around delays at this point. Yeah, obviously, I think all of us who follow this case would really like for there to be a resolution as soon as possible.

[00:24:40] And by resolution, I want this case to have the right kind of resolution. And by that, I'm not saying we need to have a conviction or we need to have an acquittal of Richard Allen.

[00:24:51] But at the end of the day, I want us to have a verdict that all of us who follow the case closely can look at and say that is just that was a fair verdict. Or that's something you can't put on speed on speed.

[00:25:08] You can't accelerate and make that happen super quick or super fast. It takes time. How badly do you think that contempt proceedings are going to delay things? This needs they need time to prepare. Hopefully it won't delay things too long, but I don't know how much discovery

[00:25:29] there is surrounding the the Westerman case or about all the details of the league. There may be a lot of discovery actually come to think of it. I believe let me double check this by believe we actually do have an understanding

[00:25:46] of how much discovery there is in the Westerman case. And let me check. I believe there was a filing to that effect, which I will read from. So we do I will read from this filing, which indicates at least some of the discovery in the Westerman case.

[00:26:04] There's a page of charging information. There's a probable cause affidavit, which we've all seen and read. That is three pages. There was an officer report, which is two hundred and fifty pages. There are five DVDs of interviews.

[00:26:23] Obviously, that's not an insubstantial amount of material is not as overwhelming as the amount of material in the Delphi case, the Richard Allen case. But obviously, that is material that Brad Rosie, Andrew Baldwin and their representatives should be given an opportunity to go through

[00:26:42] to make sure that they feel that the information contained therein is fair. Yeah, well said. It's you want things to be done by the book, especially when it's such an unusual situation like this, frankly. That's the that's the time where you really want to break the book out.

[00:27:02] You know, you really want to adhere to it. And I'll be very curious going forward. I know we've said this before, but we don't know what those justices. We don't know what the opinions in the case were. We know that we know that the justices were universally against.

[00:27:17] Throwing Judge Gall off the case. Nobody went for that. That was unanimous. We know that they were also unanimous in not going for a 70 day speedy trial. We know that there was more of a split around bringing the defense attorneys back on, but that won the day.

[00:27:32] And so I will be very curious to see the majority opinion and what is it called? The dissenting opinion to see the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion about that, because it could give us some sense of going forward.

[00:27:46] What might happen to me if the justices wrote something that essentially gave a green flag to throw them off in in a specific way and like outline that, then that could happen. And it's also possible to me that they said, don't throw them off.

[00:28:02] That's not what you're supposed to do. You know, Lehman's argument convinced us that that's not appropriate for this issue anyways, and in which case. I don't I don't know what's happening. I think they stay on. I I think the fact that the relationships have broken down.

[00:28:17] So it seems like irretrievably here is concerning to me. Yeah, it doesn't exactly fill us with optimism for the future. But hopefully we're wrong. But that's where things stand now. We're obviously keep an eye on this in the future and keep you apprised.

[00:28:36] Thank you so much for listening. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime,

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