The Delphi Murders: Bad Facts: The Defense's Case

[00:00:00] Content Warning this episode contains discussion of the murder of two girls. Welcome back to a new episode from our latest segment, Bad Facts, which is where we talk about all of the things that could potentially hurt the case from one perspective or another in different cases.

[00:00:19] So when a lawyer talks about bad facts, that stuff that's inconvenient, that stuff that does not help their case. So we're going to be doing that for different cases that we cover. Yesterday, we did it for the prosecution in the Delphi case.

[00:00:32] Of course, the case against Richard Allen, the man accused of murdering Delphi teenagers Abigail Williams and Liberty German. Today, we're going to be doing the Bad Facts for the defense team.

[00:00:42] And then tomorrow, we're going to be summing it all up, taking some of these points head-to-head, comparing them, and giving our final thoughts on where the case stands. Please keep in mind that it's currently January 2024. A lot can change before trial. Evidence can get dismissed.

[00:01:00] New evidence can come up. There can be any number of outcomes or developments that will influence this. So this is not some final summation of how strong the case is or isn't.

[00:01:11] It's simply an opportunity to discuss some of the big issues in the case and take a perspective that really digs into the strategy behind things. It's just how that strategy and such appears now.

[00:01:24] And keep in mind that at this point, we don't even know who Richard Allen is going to be defended by at trial. Yes. And I'll just say, you can disagree with us. We're trying to bring a strategic perspective here and look at things coldly and clinically.

[00:01:40] But reasonable people can disagree on most things. So I would say just keep that in mind. It's just meant to be part of a discussion, not some sort of our opinion is law sort of thing. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee.

[00:01:56] 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. And this is The Delphi Murders Bad Facts. The Defenses Case.

[00:02:58] We're going to be going into a lot of things here. But to start, I want to make a pretty obvious point that when it comes to this case in many ways, Richard Allen is his own worst enemy. Absolutely. Time and time again, that has come up.

[00:03:20] Frankly, I would argue that to a certain extent that tendency seems to have also perhaps infected his defense team, at least his original defense team. Doing things that are essentially in the context of the case self-destructive.

[00:03:35] It's going to be interesting to talk about because some of what we're going to speak about almost neutralizes some of the things we talked yesterday about the defense.

[00:03:45] Like it's so harmful, some of the things that he's done in terms of his own case that it neutralizes some of the things that could have been good for him. Yes.

[00:03:56] He's not the sort of client lawyers like to have because he has consistently made things worse for himself and more challenging for his attorneys. And I think if it was one incident, then we could say, well, okay, that happens. People make mistakes.

[00:04:15] But it's been again and again, digging himself deeper. So that's worth stating because that creates a volatile situation because it turns out what's going to say or do next. Yes. Let's talk about one of the bigger things that he did that was a strategic disaster.

[00:04:36] He put himself there. He put himself on the trails of Delphi during the murders. And he did so early on back in 2017. Yeah, yes. If not for that, the prosecution would have to establish that he was there by using their witnesses or what have you.

[00:05:02] But now you have Richard Allen himself saying I was there that day. And one especially problematic aspect of this is that he identifies witnesses we know were there who saw him. So it's not his word for it and no one saw him.

[00:05:24] It's not, oh, he was wandering around. Nobody got a clear glimpse of him or he didn't get a clear glimpse of anyone else. He mentions these three young ladies who he saw and had this bizarre interaction with.

[00:05:36] So if not for that, the defense could have said, well, we're not sure if these three young ladies saw our client. Who's to say it was years ago their descriptions may not fit him exactly. They could have done something with that.

[00:05:54] But now they have their clients saying, oh no, that was me and I saw them. It's brutal. It's a brutal thing because we talked last time about the eyewitnesses not being consistent. So you have a lot of room there.

[00:06:05] If he's not even saying I'm there, I mean, who's to say maybe he's home. Maybe he's off doing something else. We can't put him at the trails. I mean, maybe because it's up to the prosecution to prove all the elements of the crime.

[00:06:21] And obviously one of the elements of the crime is he was there when it was happening. And if they can't prove that he has to be acquitted and now they don't have to prove he was there because he puts himself there.

[00:06:33] They're trying to work with that and say, well, he said he was there that day within a certain window of time. That doesn't mean he was there during that entire window of time. So that's an effort to try to deal with this problem.

[00:06:48] Yeah, that's a strained position given that he identifies the three girls. They say they saw him. So it's sort of like, I mean, they have to try that. But it's really that this is such a unforced error when it comes to this situation on his part.

[00:07:09] And people say, well, you know... The cliche is defense attorneys always tell potential clients and actual clients not to talk to police. And this is one of the reasons why. Because him talking to police and giving this information made his position worse.

[00:07:33] Now, if you believe Richard Allen is guilty and you believe that getting information to the police can help serve the cause of justice, obviously you want him to talk to police and divulge this. But we're just speaking from a purely cold-minded, pragmatic, strategic point of view.

[00:07:53] This is why defense attorneys don't like people talking to police. You box yourself into a story in this case. It's pretty damning. And I will say, I think people have wondered why would somebody do this?

[00:08:05] Why would they go to police and reveal it if they were the killer? People often view killers as, you know, I think more strategic than they are in real life, more intelligent than they are in real life.

[00:08:19] But I will tell you that I think there is a phenomenon. We've seen this in cases like the disappearance and murder of the lion sisters in Maryland, that especially early on when there's a fear that I've been seen,

[00:08:37] there is sometimes an attempt to control the narrative and control the situation by admitting to so much, portraying oneself as a witness and then hoping that nothing further happens.

[00:08:48] Because there's a sense of if somebody, if I would rather knock on their door than have them come knock on my door and it's like, why didn't you come forward?

[00:08:56] So that is a valid strategy as far as people attempting to cover up their involvement in a homicide goes. You could also look at it as just a guy was trying to help. That's your perspective.

[00:09:06] But I think, you know, when people kind of talk about like, why would he do this? Well, there's I mean, could be any number of reasons good and bad. Kevin has made this clear and I want to stress it. The defense doesn't have to prove he's innocent.

[00:09:21] The prosecution has to prove he's guilty. The defense can just not put on a case. They could just sit there and say, all right, poke, poke, here's why your evidence is awful. Bye everybody.

[00:09:31] And that strategy can work sometimes and they don't have to put on any evidence in this case. They've made the choice of going with actual innocence and they're going to hit that very hard.

[00:09:44] So I don't think that that's going to happen in this case from what if they stay on, I think we're going to see that continue. But they don't have to do anything. That being said, there's certain pieces of information that if they existed and were good

[00:10:03] would have been very helpful to know at different times. What do you what are you an alibi? What do you have in mind? An alibi. Where was he that day?

[00:10:11] If he was not if he was at the trails, but at a different time, a time that doesn't work with the murder timeline. If he was somewhere else when that was happening, where? What was his work schedule like? Was he just off that Monday? Did he take off?

[00:10:29] I mean, where was he? When did his wife see him that day? There's a lot that's being that there's a lot that is frankly not being discussed that makes me read between lines.

[00:10:41] Like, you know, the Franks memo says there's no DNA, but you can also for a long time, I just read between lines and said there's no there's no usable DNA because it would have been used by now.

[00:10:51] I don't think that there's a good alibi because I think it would have been deployed by now. I don't think there's good news from him for him in that front. That's just I could be wrong.

[00:11:01] Possibly showed up at a at a family birthday party like right after the murders and seemed fine. It wasn't wasn't to shoveled or anything like that. I that could be the case, but it feels like for the amount of random stuff that was thrown in that Franks memorandum,

[00:11:18] we would have heard about that if there was anything good there, even not an actual alibi, even just something that kind of indicates a way timeline wise. The other thing I wonder about is a phone.

[00:11:30] He in one of his stories to police, he has himself checking his stock ticker on his phone or at least checking his stock ticker. I imagine that would be done on a phone. I don't know how you don't think he's wandering around with his laptop.

[00:11:44] And now to me, I have two minds about the phone. If he had his phone that day and it's in the almost the data of what phones were there that day, then that proves he's there.

[00:12:00] If it's not there, why would you say that you were on your stock ticker when there's no evidence of your phone even being there? So you're assuming that there is evidence his phone was there? I don't necessarily think there was.

[00:12:16] But that's a very strange thing to get wrong. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like that, that would seem duplicitous because we have a specific memory. Yeah, I was checking my I was checking the stocks. That's what I was doing.

[00:12:35] And then your phone isn't even on or near there. Why are you saying that? How do you get that wrong? That's not saying like, oh, I photographed this tree when I actually was photographing this tree.

[00:12:46] Like that's a very specific lie that's meant to convey that you were just kind of distracted and wandering around when maybe you weren't. So that's something I wonder about to phone and alibi. Haven't heard much about either. Here's another thing that's bad for Alan.

[00:13:07] I want to talk about the bullet and the concept of felony murder. Kevin, can you refresh our memory about what felony murder is? So felony murder, which is essentially what he's charged with in this case.

[00:13:20] He's charged with being involved in a kidnapping that the girls died in the midst of. When it comes to felony murder, you don't have to prove that a person literally directly personally took someone's life.

[00:13:39] All you have to do is prove that someone committed a felony and that as a result of that felony or during that felony, someone was killed.

[00:13:51] So in this case, if the felony is kidnapping, then essentially all you have to do is prove that Alan kidnapped the girls, which.

[00:14:04] If he if the if bridge guy had a gun and was instructing the girls to go somewhere they did not want to go and would not go willingly. And they're only doing so because he has a gun on them. That's kidnapping.

[00:14:23] So that's all they have to prove is that he took part in the kidnapping. It is really, really, really bad for him that that bullet was found in the crime scene. He also has not provided any explanation for that that could point to other things.

[00:14:35] He's not he's not said, listen, I would go out and shoot my handgun in the woods sometimes as a weird thing to do, but not criminal or at least that's not what you're looking at me for. So that's how my bullet probably got there.

[00:14:49] He's not saying, I let my weird buddy, my gun, maybe he did. Yeah.

[00:14:53] So again, so a bullet is found at the crime scene and the prosecution has testimony that saying it indicates that this bullet comes from a gun owned by Richard Allen and that Richard Allen, again, his own worst enemy is saying he did not give anyone else access to this weapon.

[00:15:11] This is also really bad because we know that a gun was used in the crime. A gun was not used to kill the girls, but the girls on tape on Libby's phone while she's rolling are saying he has a gun.

[00:15:23] So if I think there would be actually less it would be less bad for him if the girls hadn't said that because it maybe they would have assumed that they were costed with a gun, but it wouldn't be you wouldn't be hearing it from the victims themselves.

[00:15:39] So it's really that's bad.

[00:15:43] If you can prove that the bullet came from his gun and he says no one else had access to the gun and the bullet is at the scene with these two girls met their tragic ends, then that's that seems to be pretty close to being it.

[00:16:00] Yeah, that's bad. Unless you can contrive away. Oh, maybe he was out there earlier and the bullet was out there for a while. He says, No, I didn't go out there with my gun earlier. Also, it would have been why would he been over at the crime scene?

[00:16:12] It's off the beaten path. It's it's like so they have to they have to get they have to either really get a great expert who can really attack ballistics or have. Yeah, I mean that or somehow get the gun tossed.

[00:16:28] And so that again, it's it's the bullet is a very bad fact. You have to deal with it. Either have to have the expert.

[00:16:36] You have to say where we there was something wrong with the search warrant that led to the bullet that led to the gun being recovered.

[00:16:43] You have to say, oh, ballistics evidence in and of itself is in trust where they said we shouldn't even have it as a part of the trial. You have to attack perhaps the chain of evidence. We don't even know that this was a bullet they found.

[00:16:56] You just have to do something. You have to really go all out. And the fact that we've seen the defense make some of those moves indicates that they recognize the obvious fact that this this bullet is extraordinarily bad for them.

[00:17:13] Let's talk about another one that definitely hits the list of Alan is his own worst enemy. He made incriminating statements. Okay, let's get this out of the way. We don't know what he said. There are so many possibilities.

[00:17:28] And so I think that this this segment could range in damning to maybe not great, but maybe understandable like what?

[00:17:39] Well, the maybe not great, but maybe understandable like a mild version where you could say maybe the prosecutors twisting it around is if he said something along the lines of I know I'm innocent and I didn't do this, but I feel like I'm going crazy. Maybe I did.

[00:17:53] I don't know what's real anymore. Someone kind of losing it. Someone having a breakdown and being like, I'm almost convinced I did it now. I don't know what's going on.

[00:18:03] Something like that to me is not so damning because you can maybe understand somebody in a moment of real frustration despair. If you've ever been accused of something that that's a lie. And people are just drilling down on you. Maybe you almost like, okay, maybe I did.

[00:18:21] You know, you just don't. I could understand. I think we could all understand that a human being under pressure saying something like that. But there are other options that are a lot less kind to Alan. The worst would be I did it.

[00:18:37] Here's how providing details of the crime that are not known to the public. That's the worst. I don't necessarily think that's the only thing that can hurt him though. Well, I think it hurt him.

[00:18:49] Well, if he's asserting that he did this in a clear and convincing way again and again, that's bad for him because the jury is going to hear that. And the reason that's so bad to me is that who he's talking to.

[00:19:06] If he were talking to, if we were getting this and it's also on tape. If he were talking to when we were getting this from a law enforcement official, a correctional officer or worst of all, a fellow inmate, we could make all sorts of observations.

[00:19:24] We could say, we could ask questions. Was this a coercive interview? Was this a coercive interaction with the fellow inmate? Did the fellow inmate perhaps have a motive to lie about it? Or to push him or to kind of goad him into saying something that he didn't mean.

[00:19:41] Did the correctional officer or law enforcement officer intimidate him? Did they kind of say like, you know, maybe we'll take mercy on you if you do this?

[00:19:52] Was there was this like an eight hour interview with no breaks and he's starting to lose it in a mentally fragile state? You could make arguments that such types of confessions should be more strictly scrutinized because of the nature of the underlying conversations in the context around them.

[00:20:12] I don't think that all confessions in such environments are necessarily always false, but we can see the ingredients for a possible false confession when we see things like coercion or mixed incentives amongst other inmates. Even if it's on record, even if it's recorded, it can still be problematic.

[00:20:31] But in this case, he calls up his wife and mother and seemingly makes multiple confessions. So that's pretty bad because I can tell you these women show up to every single hearing he's at. They're his support system. They love them.

[00:20:47] And, um, you know, this is what he did. This is what he says to them. So I don't think they are necessary. I don't think they fit the bill of people who were trying to coerce a confession out of him.

[00:21:01] In fact, I think they probably wanted him to shut the hell up and not damage himself if I had to guess. They're not trying to get him to do this. He's preemptively doing this and I can't even imagine what that conversation was like.

[00:21:16] But if it's anything less than, I don't know, I'm confused. Maybe I did do it. I don't think I did. But if it's anything less than that, the jury is going to hear that they're going to hear him saying this to women who love him.

[00:21:27] And I mean, it's a disaster. It's a disaster because there is no reason beyond a mental breakdown. That he should be saying that. So they have to figure out a way to deal with this.

[00:21:44] And the first thing they do once they get word that he has made these statements, these incriminating statements as they immediately go to Westville. Yes. And this is when we hear about the safekeeping order or the motion.

[00:22:06] This is when they make this filing that you all remember about how terribly he's being treated in prison like he's a prisoner of war dog in a kennel. And he's being subjected to awful treatment that is basically driving him crazy.

[00:22:26] So the implicit message of this is kind of that these confessions were made because he was driven mad. It's strongly indicative of a defense team that is scrambling to get ahead of incriminating statements of bad facts.

[00:22:48] They're throwing in splashy picks for the media to run with demonstrating how poorly he's been treated, which are then revealed to be him wearing a shirt that is dirty from wreck time when he has other shirts.

[00:23:03] There's a real desperate whiff off of this document to be to be blunt. And when you take it in the context of when you take it in no context, it's shocking. Then when you take it in the context of he's just confessed to the murders.

[00:23:19] Maybe it's true intention is a little bit clear. They they're using clinical terms, clinical mental health terms in the document, you know, schizophrenic psychotic, you know, not based on any experts beliefs, but just based on their own experience. They're lawyers. They're not psychiatrists. They're not psychologists.

[00:23:41] They it was sloppy. It was frankly sloppy to use some of this. It it was it was rushed. It was rushed and it seemed with the distinct intention to brace the public. And I think it worked for a while until news of the concessions came out.

[00:23:57] So that actually fits into a bit of a thing that we're going to talk about with the defense team themselves in terms of trading short term gains for long term gains. And credibility.

[00:24:09] One thing that's been lost in the shuffle somewhat, I think is the kind of the mental health narrative. And I want to talk about that. I want I want us to take the listeners through this because I think it's interesting and I think it says something.

[00:24:21] I found when they were talking about the mental health despite using clinical terms that didn't really seem to make any sense like schizophrenia. Schizophrenia doesn't come on in your middle age. That's not how it works.

[00:24:35] But mental health related to the confessions is interesting because we talk to experts. A man in a stressful situation in an undeniably awful situation can experience a mental health breakdown and symptoms as a result of that. That's not news. That's that's that happens.

[00:24:58] So to me, I found the mental health angle pretty compelling from that safekeeping order that maybe he said something. But maybe it was triggered by some real mental health issues. Then that gets dropped like a hot potato.

[00:25:11] The whole mental health thing gets completely dropped and it's substituted with something that's frankly baffling. First, we hear that three mental health professionals in Westville evaluate Richard Allen. They were trying to learn whether he needs forcible medication. He apparently did not.

[00:25:29] People who are psychotic can't turn it off. There's there's medication. There's treatment, but you asking nicely is not going to make somebody's mental health symptoms disappear. That's not how it works. So that is interesting. In addition to that, the prosecution is continuously asked for his mental health records.

[00:25:56] And the defense has bought that vigorously. And of course, you understand why a person's health record should be kept private and confidential. But if your client does actually have a mental health issue that would explain why he made false

[00:26:18] confessions or what have you, you think you'd want that information to reach the prosecution. So it feels like there's some bad facts. Oh, yeah. Associated with those mental health records that have effectively shut down that road as a possible

[00:26:38] explanation to get around the overriding bad fact of the confessions. Why don't you explain what the new explanation for his confessions is? The new explanation for the confessions comes from the Frank's memorandum where there

[00:26:56] is a suggestion that some odinous prison guards at Westville put pressure on Richard Allen, essentially telling him you need to confess to these murders or will harm your wife and family. They acknowledge that they have no evidence that these guards ever did such a thing.

[00:27:19] And the defense team further acknowledges that Richard Allen himself has not made that allegation to them. So it's just them trying to come up with an explanation to deal with the bad fact of the confessions. And the explanation is embarrassing. That's an embarrassing conspiracy.

[00:27:41] And it's embarrassing not because guards could never threaten an inmate. No, it's embarrassing because they put it in a filing without any evidence and without having even gotten the story from their client. It's embarrassing. It doesn't make sense on a number of levels.

[00:27:56] One is also if I wanted to, if I needed for someone to make a confession to murder and I was willing to use whatever tactics available to me to make this person make this confession.

[00:28:16] I would try to ensure that the person would make the confession to law enforcement, to a detective, to what have you. Why would you pressure someone to make a confession to his mother? The whole thing is just like shocking that they put that in there.

[00:28:34] I remember when I read that part, I was like, okay, maybe there's some, maybe there's some tense conversation or tense interaction picked up on video at Westville and maybe they're reading into that. And then, or maybe he told them that. Maybe he said, yeah, they've been pushing me.

[00:28:49] And then you read the footnote where they say, no, no, we just, I mean, couldn't have happened. Maybe. Who knows? Maybe it went something like this and it's it just what? It's an implicit way of saying we can't explain the confession through mental health.

[00:29:05] Here's another method of trying to explain it. Just reminds me of those like Jonathan Frakes memes, you know, where like he hosted that show about like mysteries and stuff. And he's like a writer made it up. It's like a lawyer made it up. That's the source.

[00:29:18] It's just, I don't know. It was we're going to talk about undermined credibility in a moment, but it to me, it's like watch. It's like there's two hotels right next to each other. One is kind of a crummy one star hotel and that's the guard thing.

[00:29:35] And the mental health explanation is a five star hotel next door. It's like watching Rosie and Baldwin flee the four star hotel and then pack up in, you know, hunker down in the one star hotel.

[00:29:48] And it's like, why are you leaving the good explanation to go to such a crappy explanation? There's got to be some bad fast, some bad stuff happened in that four star hotel because there's no reason to do this otherwise. It's it's bad.

[00:30:03] So I've alluded to feeling like at times the defense team, the original defense team with Alan has been their own worst enemies. They've done much like their client. They've done things to damage themselves. And I feel like there's been a consistent theme of overstatement by them.

[00:30:25] And I'm not going to call it lies. I'm going to call it overstatements, but nonetheless, it's harmed their credibility. We talked recently with a researcher named Thomas. He went over all the social media claims that were included in the Frank's memorandum.

[00:30:41] Again and again, we saw claims being made in the Frank's memorandum that are not truly borne out by the evidence in terms of the social media. When when that's happening, when that level of bluffing is going on, it is a very bad look.

[00:30:57] It undermines credibility and it's shocking to do that. In this case, when everything is so highly scrutinized and I will say this, it makes it hard to believe other things because when you're basically saying, wow, this guy must have been part of the gang because he posted

[00:31:21] an arrowhead picture that looked similar to Brad Holder's. I mean, we're in La La Land. That's that's not evidence of anything. That's that's that's the guards must have threatened him. He didn't tell us, but maybe it happened. They when there was the oral arguments on the safekeeping order,

[00:31:43] I felt like Rosie had it. I felt like Rosie could have gone up there and said that no person who has not been convicted should be up in Westville. No person who's not been convicted should be in prison. That's it. That's the argument. That's not standard.

[00:32:03] That's not routine. We have to find something better and instead they, you know, he's being he's the worst treated prisoner in Westville. All this stuff that then got slapped down immediately. The Cass County Sheriff would love to have him. No, he wouldn't.

[00:32:21] But he'd be willing to be willing to do it of force by a court. Oversatement instead of just stating the case based on the strongest stuff you have. You got to kitchen sink everything include stuff that's kind of weak with stuff that might be strong and it undermines

[00:32:38] credibility because it always it always comes out. It sounds great at first and then the surface is scratched and it's gilded. It's it's not, you know, frankly, like half of the things half the things with with what they've been doing.

[00:32:58] It's like that scene in the Maltese Falcon when they're all like scraping the Falcon at the end, like trying to get to the gold and it's lead. And I don't know why they're doing that because when you're

[00:33:12] when you're making a salad, you don't put in your fresh carrots and celery from from the garden and the beautiful lettuce you bought at a fancy store and then a bunch of old olives you found in the fridge and, you know, God knows how long

[00:33:24] that vinaigrette's been there because it ruins the salad. You include the ingredients that are vetted and maybe it's disappointing to not have the vinaigrette. Maybe the vinaigrette would have made things nice if it was nice, but if it's just toxic sludge at this point, don't

[00:33:40] put it in your salad. I just don't know. I just don't know some of the strategic moves they've been making also is creating some bad facts for the defense. For instance, we keep saying this. The defense team doesn't have to prove anything.

[00:34:02] They just have to poke holes in the prosecution's case. That's all they have to do. You don't have to. I'm going to really date myself embarrassingly here, but you don't have to be like an episode of Perry Mason. The defense attorney doesn't have to solve the crime

[00:34:22] and prove someone else did it in order to get their client acquitted. No. All you have to do is just poke holes. This is an element of their case that doesn't work. That's all you have to do, but they made the move of putting

[00:34:36] forth their own solution to the crime in the Frank's memorandum, which was basically that it was done by a group of Odinus acting in concert and that other Odinus in the state have worked to protect the killers. This creates a situation where if I were Richard Allen, I

[00:34:58] would be concerned that now a jury has two explanations for the crime and instead of carefully weighing reasonable doubt about whether or not they believe that Richard Allen is guilty, there's going to look at the two different explanations and decide which one they feel is most credible.

[00:35:20] And if you look at the Odinus theory, it's been put out there. It's been picked over by everyone imaginable. There's lots of problems with it and perhaps a jury were to say, well, I don't find that theory credible. So therefore this other thing must be true.

[00:35:41] And you know, that's frankly not necessarily true. It's possible that Richard Allen could be factually innocent and the Odinus theory could be false. Yes. And that there was some other explanation, but since that's the only other explanation they've offered. Telegraphing your strategy to that extent so far in

[00:36:02] advance is bizarre to me. I know that there has to be some vetting about what can actually be presented at court. They can't just get up and say, you know, the ghost of President Nixon is guilty. Like there has to be some vetting, right Kevin? Yeah.

[00:36:15] They do have a lot of leeway in the defense they can put on but there is vetting about what can be presented in court. Nonetheless, holding the cards as close to the vest as possible into the last minute. I mean, imagine the shock and awe of something like

[00:36:29] the Odinus theory hitting the ears of the jurors kind of boom. I mean, the jury is not supposed to be aware a hyper aware of the case. They're not going to be picking people who are Delphi sluice online. God willing, but you know at the same time you.

[00:36:51] I don't know like putting it out in this way and you can say well maybe they're just getting some crowdsourcing and vetting going but I don't know. It doesn't really having people. I mean the reception to this thing has really palpably soured over time.

[00:37:05] This is not the stock of the Odinus theory has not gone up as a result of this. It is maybe went up a little bit at the time because people were really interested and then sort of has come crashing down.

[00:37:15] That's that's been our interpretation of some of the public discourse around this we've been watching it seeing how people talk about it. People recognize that there's some pretty extreme flaws with this and even if they're willing to tango with elements of it pretty almost universally people acknowledge

[00:37:32] that at least aspects of it are very problematic from a believability side of things. And in addition to that I just think springings if you're going to do an outrageous theory fine but maybe try to spring as much as possible of it on the you know in court

[00:37:51] at the last minute maybe prompt people to go with their emotions. Oh it must have been a cult because this guy is just one guy but those guys had a bunch of guys so it must have been them.

[00:38:02] I think that's a better way of handling something like this than what they've done. And I want to make an obvious point too that they need an explanation like the cult and like the conspiracy because of some of the bad facts we've mentioned you

[00:38:22] need for instance an explanation for why he confessed and so that means you need something like Odinus guards. You need this conspiracy to be far reaching to explain away the bad facts against your client. Yeah to make him rational not mentally ill but also still

[00:38:44] behaving in this way you really need to stretch because you need you need to explain he confessed there's this ballistics evidence well maybe the Odinus planted it and forced him to confess. I mean to me when you are when you need a conspiracy

[00:39:01] that far ranging to be true you're indicating that your case isn't trouble. That's not a good sign as far as the case goes and it just reminds me like when you know and social media people will like post videos of cats or animals doing

[00:39:17] weird stuff and then sometimes it's almost become a meme someone will step in and say like hi cat expert here cats only do this when they're in extreme distress and I just feel like like guys this isn't funny defense attorneys only do this when they're in extreme

[00:39:32] distress because none of this for all of the bravado for all of the we're the only ones who can save Richard Allen for all of that it rings very it the effect is rings very hollow to me because there's so much scrambling

[00:39:52] this does not seem to be a team that feels that they're dealing from a place of strength regardless of what's going on because regardless of what they say or how they posture because it's just there's too much there's too much stretching this too much bluffing going

[00:40:11] on it's I don't I don't feel like it's an effective response to their clients predicament because I think again it's it's undermined credibility and what they're doing in their own work and their end you know their word

[00:40:24] if they if they come back on the case it will be having lied to a judge about having withdrawn it will be having lost you know the confidence of everybody else working on this thing it's not it's not really a powerful place

[00:40:40] to be to be to have undermined one's own credibility to this extent and I think that they're probably just trying to do what they feel is best for their client but I question whether some of these strategic responses

[00:40:57] to bad facts have been the best way to deal with the predicament their client is in I don't I don't know that it has sometimes I think a more cautious judicious measured response can be more deadly than whatever

[00:41:15] this is that's not to say that they're faded to lose the case I don't think I think it's still winnable for the defense. I think if the if the new defense ends up being on they can switch the strategy around and they kind of

[00:41:31] get a free because they're coming into it fresh may maybe they can come up with something a little bit more believable and palatable if the old defense stays on they have the opportunity I mean I think they would have a hard time like ditching the Odin this

[00:41:46] theory but maybe maybe shaving it down keeping the parts that work and getting rid of some of the other things could be could crafted into something that a jury could buy or they might get lucky and pick a jury that likes conspiracy theories.

[00:42:06] In any case Richard Allen's case is winnable for their side is winnable for the prosecution. Yes, it's not a slam dunk for either side. I think the things that have been happening on the defense side have given some subtle wins to the prosecution so far.

[00:42:23] Yes, I would agree with that. So like they've pushed it further into the middle than they needed to and that's kind of shocking because again a lot of this feels like if it had been handled differently some of these things could have actually been

[00:42:37] wins for the defense and so yeah I think we talked last time about a lot of this is unforced errors and a lot of this is coming from the actual people involved whether it's the defendant or the defense team and it's been self-destructive on their side

[00:42:54] and I think it's failed to capitalize on some of the weaknesses on the prosecution side. So I think there needs to be at the very least an acknowledgement of that whoever ends up taking the take case going forward acknowledgement of that and

[00:43:07] a determination to do better and maybe instead of juggling everything at once constantly and and and trying the case in the media to the degree they have and like you know posturing as like you know he's an innocent man we're doing this maybe maybe focus

[00:43:28] on the weaknesses in the prosecution's case and hammer in on that because I think I think I think it's winnable but they have to they have to adopt a winning strategy. I don't think anyone's going to win this case by just showing up and doing whatever.

[00:43:46] All right well thanks for listening tomorrow we are going to put some of the issues we've talked about in both bad facts episodes focusing on the prosecution and the defense we're going to put them head to head like where does the where do the witnesses fall

[00:43:58] out where does the confession fall out and we're going to kind of compare and contrast and sum it all up. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover

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