The Delphi Murders: Judge Frances Gull Rules on the Franks Motion

[00:00:00] Content Warning, this episode contains discussion of the murder of two girls. So on January 22nd, 2024, there is yet another update in the Delphi Murders case, which is of course the case against Richard M. Allen, who is accused of murdering Delphi teenagers Abigail

[00:00:19] Williams and Liberty German back in 2017. And of course, what happened on the 22nd is that Judge Gull, who'd had several outstanding motions and orders on her desk shortly after the return of attorneys Baldwin and Rosie made a lot of decisions. So we are going to talk about those

[00:00:39] decisions and try to figure out what it might mean for the future of the case. 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 reporting,

[00:00:57] interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the murder sheet. And this is The Delphi Murders. Judge Frances Gull rules on the Franks Motion. Okay, so this is a pretty short filing from the judge in this case. It's only really one and a half pages.

[00:02:00] But it's got a big impact. It packs in a lot of stuff because in our title, we say she rules on the Franks Motion, but she also ruled on some other stuff too, including the motion in Limney.

[00:02:13] The motion in Limney was when the defense team of Baldwin and Rosie filed a motion saying basically the ballistic evidence is so unreliable, it shouldn't be put in front of the jury. Right. And that is something that has worked in some states, that some judges are moving back

[00:02:35] from ballistics and toolmark identification evidence. So that's not unheard of in that larger context in Indiana. That's not really been the case so far at least. So I think a lot of people who are observing this saw again many, many opportunities to try to take

[00:02:58] a hit at that ballistics evidence. The motions that the defense filed were really could be seen as a multi prong attack to try to get the ballistics evidence taken out of the case. And we can see because they're focusing so much time on it that makes sense because

[00:03:17] it shows us that it is important to them. And it is truly important to the case because the ballistics evidence, this is the bullet recovered at the crime scene which the prosecution says

[00:03:28] they can prove came from a gun owned by Richard Allen. Yeah. So it puts him at the crime scene like in a way that him saying, hey, I was at the trails that day doesn't really because a person

[00:03:39] as we know can be at the trails and not be guilty of the homicide because there were other people at the trails that day. So he did the prosecution a huge favor by

[00:03:49] saying that but it doesn't really connect them to the murders in the way the bullet or rather cartridge does. Now that being said, I think there's been some very reasonable concerns raised about ballistics over the years. So I believe that the defense will have a great

[00:04:08] opportunity to really hammer away at some of that during trial. But one thing we've always said is that regardless of what happened with the filing of the motion in Lemonet, they're still going to have

[00:04:18] that opportunity. They can bring in experts, they can attack it from just the fundamentals of like this is not as reliable as they're saying and a lot of people are moving away from ballistics

[00:04:27] now. So they can still do whatever they want at trial. Yes. But what this was about was trying to get a big win before the trial. There was trying to say the officers lied or there's problems with

[00:04:45] the search warrant or there's problems with the underlying evidence and all of this was about trying to get the ballistics evidence thrown out because when we talk about problems with the search warrant, if you think there's a problem with the search warrant

[00:05:00] that would be about getting rid of the ballistics evidence. Also the confession because if the search warrant leads to his arrest, he's put in prison and you argue that he only confessed because

[00:05:08] he was in prison either because he had a mental health breakdown or because Odinus guards forced him to by threatening and he's never said that but maybe it happened. If you're trying to do

[00:05:20] all that then and he's only in prison because of the search warrant and because of what they found there then you could argue that the confessions go too in my opinion. And if the

[00:05:32] confessions go that's another huge blow for the prosecution. So it's not surprising to me that they're doing all this because if you are a defense attorney and you can get massive amounts of evidence thrown out and the case against your client is dismissed, you've done a good job.

[00:05:47] So you got to try that. But it didn't turn out the way the defense hoped. Judge Gold basically denied everything. She said we don't even need to have a hearing on these issues. Motion and limonies denied, motion suppressed, no hearing on Frank's.

[00:06:04] But the Frank's hearing it's interesting. I think there was some, you know, the thing that got all the attention was the Frank's memorandum. That was like the big media tech because it had

[00:06:17] the theory of the case and had all the really gruesome details about the murder of these two girls and it had like the controversy. So everyone's abuzz about that. But one thing

[00:06:26] that kind of got overlooked was like the law around Frank's and Brad Rosie, one of the two defense attorneys put something together that was a filing about why he felt Frank's was relevant there. And it did get into things around certainly less interesting and salacious

[00:06:46] than memorandum but certainly quite relevant. What is the burden of proof around Frank's? Like what level do they have to get to in terms of proving their case in order to even have a hearing?

[00:07:00] So it's important to keep in mind that when you're bringing in hearings like that, there may be some standards that have to be met when a judge is having the discretion to determine whether or not a hearing is necessary. That makes sense.

[00:07:20] That makes sense. And certainly in some quarters, the fact that Judge Gold not only denied these motions but she denied them without hearing, it's being suggested that that is a sign of bias. Yes. But that will be the case anytime she rules against the defense going on,

[00:07:43] going forward. That's the unfortunate situation that we're in by keeping both parties, by keeping the judge and by keeping the old defense team. The Indiana Supreme Court has created a bit of a situation where they can basically argue at any time I believe that

[00:08:02] she's biased and the obvious question would be well, would another judge have done much different? I've not seen any indication that that would be true for this latest. I mean, like nobody's really... It's extraordinarily difficult in the state of Indiana to get the fruit of a search warrant

[00:08:24] thrown out. There is a presumption that a search warrant is valid. With that said, there was a case last year where Andy Baldwin and his colleague David Hennessy were able to get a search warrant thrown out in the Caden Smith case. But pretty quickly afterwards,

[00:08:47] a court of appeals looked at that and reinstated the search warrant. Yes. So you could win at a trial level and the prosecution could appeal it and nope. It's very, very, very difficult to get a search warrant tossed out.

[00:09:01] Yeah. So to me, it would have been really extraordinary had she granted any of this. So I don't really understand the argument that it somehow shows bias. I think... I don't understand the argument that it shows bias. I do understand the argument that some

[00:09:21] people could suggest. If people are already arguing that she's biased against them, any appearance can be made to further that argument. Right. Again, that's where I look at when I'm seeing something is would another judge

[00:09:42] likely have done different? And of course, all judges are different. Judges might come from a prosecutorial background, a defense background that's going to influence the way they see the law and interpret it in practice. But generally when I would want to see something where I'm

[00:09:58] like, wow, that really should have gone Baldwin and Rosie's way. That was a pretty clear win for them. And somehow it didn't go through. And I felt like the Frank's motion and the motion in limine for the suppression of ballistics evidence, those seemed like long shots.

[00:10:14] Maybe long shots worth taking when you're at the defense and you're trying again to get this dismissed because if you can just avoid the trial, then that's certainly less traumatic for

[00:10:21] your client. It kind of gets them out of this. But I just... Yeah. It was one of those things. But I think there's also important to note that just because a lawyer files a motion for

[00:10:35] a hearing on a particular issue doesn't mean that the judge is obligated to actually hold a hearing. And if a judge looks at the motion and determines, in my view, this doesn't deserve a hearing,

[00:10:49] this person hasn't made a good enough argument, I'm not going to hold a hearing that isn't necessarily a sign of bias. When we looked at the Frank's memorandum in detail, to me,

[00:11:02] many of the more interesting and perhaps relevant and concerning aspects of it had to do with law enforcement and the handling of information like was this done correctly? Did they hide evidence?

[00:11:14] And we can't really know because we don't have the case file in front of us and we don't have that level of access or ability to accurately assess what law enforcement did or did not do.

[00:11:27] But when we looked at elements that we could assess, less important elements in my opinion, but still ones that we could freely look at what's what with a researcher named Thomas. And he basically took us through the social media elements of this where they were looking at

[00:11:44] people they claimed were odinists and describing their social media posts. And when we looked at that there was a lot of inaccuracies or maybe overstatement. And that made me concerned for other elements of the memorandum because it was like if they're really stretching and saying

[00:12:03] Elvis Fields has a picture of an arrowhead and so does bread holder, they must be buddies. It made me a bit concerned about other elements of it because it's like, well,

[00:12:14] if that's a stretch then what else is? And maybe nothing else is a stretch but it seems like Judge Gull seems to think that there wasn't enough there either way. One of the arguments as I

[00:12:26] understood it in the Frank's memorandum was that law enforcement somehow failed in their duties because when they sought a search warrant against Richard Allen, they should have disclosed details of the odinism theory and the odinism investigation. Oh yeah. And that would be like saying that if

[00:12:49] I wanted to get a search warrant for Kagan Klein's house, I need to also disclose prior investigations into say Ronald Logan. And Judge Gull didn't seem to find those sorts of arguments compelling. One thing we've always heard from people is that a PCA does not have to include

[00:13:07] every last detail about a case. And so I'm a bit confused about that argument too. I've never, I mean the one thing that you hear about PCAs is like you don't have, you know, it has to be accurate information but do you need to include everything? No. And

[00:13:28] did they include anything about Kagan Klein? No. Do they include anything about Ron Logan? No. Do they include anything about, I'm sure, a list of other suspects that cropped up over the

[00:13:36] years? No. They don't need to. That doesn't make any sense that they would need to do that. It's not how a PCA works. You said once that we shouldn't let conspiracy theorists or whoever.

[00:13:49] The dumbest people on the internet, I think was my phrasing. I would suggest this may affect good-hearted people, independent observers, people who don't have conspiracy theories. I think they could look at this and hear some of the commentary around it by some people

[00:14:15] and look at what's happened in the history of the case, the fact that Judge Gull tried to throw these people off the case. They came back. She obviously has a little opinion of them. This is chaos. This creates an impression in the minds of some people of bias.

[00:14:32] Oh, yeah. Understandably. I mean, if I tried to fire you from the Murder Sheet podcast, Kevin, and then you've somehow fight it in court and come back and we have to record together,

[00:14:42] is anyone going to be comfortable listening to that show or are you going to be like, oh my God, that's so awkward? Any time Anya disagrees with Kevin, it's there's something else there. Yeah, that's so you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist in my

[00:14:56] mind to look at this and wonder. The problem with conspiracy theorists in this case is not necessarily always the opinions they hold. It's the lack of nuance and open-mindedness which they regard just general events of the case. I think there's a huge difference between saying,

[00:15:17] you know, there's a conspiracy. It's all rigged versus saying, hey, I don't like the optics of this. Don't know quite what's going on because I can't be in anybody's heads, but this seems problematic

[00:15:28] that the Indiana Supreme Court thought that this would be the best option for what would happen going forward. Remember, I on the show said that I thought that the defense attorneys were coming back. I really did not imagine that that would also include keeping the judge on.

[00:15:44] But certainly fair-minded people can look at this and say, I wonder if there is bias because she's denying everything they're asking for. She's denying it so quickly. I think it's likely other judges would have made the same ruling, but who knows?

[00:16:01] I'm concerned that this sort of thing could erode faith and trust in the judicial system. I, yeah, I think that's reasonable. And I'm concerned about the long-term health of this case. I'm not sure Judge Gole is going to

[00:16:26] be able to preside over this case without being constantly being accused or suspected of bias against the defense. That's my concern. Yeah, and it's complicated because we kind of look at some of the stuff and people are saying,

[00:16:44] oh, this must be bias. And it's like, is she supposed to just rule in their favor constantly to avoid the appearance of bias? Is that any better? No. But maybe that's an argument for there being a different judge on the case, frankly, because then there's not that stigma

[00:17:02] of that kind of cloud hanging over it. And let me just say, like with this, I mean, it just makes me also wonder, is this the end of the conflict? Because, or are both sides going to take another crack at each other?

[00:17:18] They still have options to go against each other. I believe that, you know, Rosy and Baldwin can press for a recusal saying that she tried to kick us off. It wasn't, she didn't do it correctly and it showed bias against us and that's just going to

[00:17:32] continue going forward. So she needs to be removed. And I think she can, if, if, and this is a big if, if the Indiana Supreme Court didn't hold with the argument that they can't be removed,

[00:17:45] but more the argument that she removed them in a bad way, didn't create a good record and and didn't go about this properly, then maybe she tries to remove them again. I don't know.

[00:17:58] I mean, I guess on some level on a human level, you'd almost like to see everyone just get along again. But I mean, come on, this is, this is the Delphi case. So this is, it's obviously going

[00:18:09] to turn more into, you know, more, more legal drama and wrangling that that would be my bet because that's just what we've seen so far. And at least so far prosecutor Nick McClendon

[00:18:20] has been silent during all of this. We all know there was a famous phone call in early October where Judge Gold asked, what do you think should happen? And he indicated at that time he believed

[00:18:31] Baldwin and Rosy Beach should be removed from the case. Does he still believe that? Does he still believe they deserve some way to be sanctioned for what happened? Is he going to try to do anything about it? Who knows? If you're McClendon and, you know,

[00:18:50] you've seen your own office and law enforcement keep the documents and discovery materials of the case under wraps for five years. And then two guys come in and like with any year leak photos of crime scene involving two dead children. That's certainly, that's going to be awkward going

[00:19:09] forward. I mean, and I know, I know Mark Lehman even said, well, there's been other leaks. I feel like that's an interesting defense talking point because it's never actually brought up what they're talking about with that. And I truly don't know. So I'd be very curious to learn

[00:19:24] what do they feel like the prosecution did that was on the same level as what their side did. And also, frankly, all of us have been teenagers and I think we've all tried variations of that argument with our parents. Oh, you're punishing me for this. Well,

[00:19:43] Jimmy down the street did something worse and his parents are okay with it. He's not getting in trouble. Did that argument work for you when you tried that with your parents? It did not work

[00:19:51] for me with my- To give them the benefit of the doubt, it would, that argument might work on me if I knew what they were talking about and it was a, it was an applicable comparison. We've

[00:20:00] talked about, you know, in our episode on the leak recently, we talked about a couple of other past incidents that people have conflated with this and also how they're different and why they're not really the same thing. So I don't know if they're referring to one

[00:20:14] of those or if they're referring to something that we're not even aware of, or if they're maybe, I don't know, maybe it's nothing. I just, I would be very curious because that's something that again, I've heard again and again and I'm just always like, what are people talking

[00:20:26] about? I'm not sure what they're referring to either. I would say if there is a leak out there that none of us are aware of, it probably wasn't much of a leak. Yeah, that's a good

[00:20:37] point. But you know, I try to keep an open mind with this. And so if there's something there that is kind of on the same level, then you know, maybe that's a decent point. I don't know.

[00:20:47] But yeah, so it's going to be really interesting to see how both sides navigate this going forward because again, you have a situation where understandably, the defense and the judge don't have much reason to really trust or like each other. And that is,

[00:21:04] you don't want a situation where it undermines the trial, in my opinion. You don't, you don't want a situation where this all just leads to an automatic appeal and there was no hope of the original

[00:21:19] trial being that end all, you know? That's frankly my concern because I don't feel that the judge's decision on these motions is really that much of a shock. But it is being portrayed as

[00:21:37] a sign of bias. And as I say, I understand why fair minded people might worry about that or be concerned that it's a sign of bias. And that makes me concerned that throughout the trial,

[00:21:51] there are going to be decisions the judge is going to make and any one of them that goes against the defense, they take an argument could be made, oh maybe this is bias me. So why even

[00:22:04] throw that in? Why even muddy the waters with this? It's not even necessarily saying judge goal has done anything wrong and deserves to be punished. It's saying we want to have

[00:22:18] as fair a trial as possible. We want to have a trial that only happens once, we don't want to have an appeal. Why add this X factor in there when ammunition would be given to make people have

[00:22:32] doubts or concerns or lose faith in the integrity of the process? And that's one thing I would be very interested in maybe picking some lawyers brains about in the coming days. How concerned,

[00:22:44] how concerning is this as far as an appeal goes? As long as she explains her reasoning and kind of keeps a good record, is it not as big of a deal because she could just point to that and

[00:22:58] say here's why I ruled the way I ruled and that's it. Or is it a situation where she can do that and there can still be a pretty powerful argument made by Richard Allen that

[00:23:10] because she tried to throw them off that's the original sin and there's no getting around that. I would be super curious about what people think about this. Is it a dire as we're saying?

[00:23:19] We know that it takes more than a judge ruling against someone to prove bias. A judge can rule against you anytime a judge rules against a person. Oh my god, they're biased against me. That's not enough. But I'm concerned about both audiences. I'm concerned about what's

[00:23:38] going to happen with the case and I'm also concerned about the fact this case is attracting unprecedented attention. People are learning about the process. They're learning about how law works and a lot of people are also and also creators are learning that the more

[00:23:54] histrionic you get about a case maybe there's an audience for that. This attention from the public they're learning how the process works. Some of them are losing faith based on what they're

[00:24:08] seeing and that's something that is troubling too much. Yeah, there's been a lot of a lot of partisanship around the case which is also troubling. I don't think it's a situation

[00:24:18] where it should be treated as a sports game where you know this is my team, this is my side. I think it's better to just keep an open mind and be critical but maybe open-minded about both sides and not coming into it necessarily with like

[00:24:34] all these defense attorneys are evil and blah blah blah. The judge is evil. You can disagree with stuff that people are doing and just still see it as people attempting to do their jobs.

[00:24:46] That's my opinion at least. I always seem to come up with opinions or thoughts to just get people angry on both sides because I think her rulings are reasonable which I'm sure would

[00:25:01] upset the defense and I think she probably should be off the case which I'm sure upsets the prosecution. I'm at this spot where I'm upsetting everybody. Nuance in the Delphi case that's not allowed. I feel like every time we say something

[00:25:18] nuanced like an air horn goes off and some reddit SWAT team is going to kick into our house. I feel that if any other trial judge made these same motions, there wouldn't be concern about bias.

[00:25:33] No, there would be. There would be a lot of catarwalling because there always is but would it affect people who are more fair-minded? No. There's always catarwalling. There's no stopping the catarwalling. That's just what people do because

[00:25:49] it gets them attention. The question is what would a reasonable person be worried about bias in that situation? My opinion is no. In this situation, my opinion is a reasonable person could be concerned because she did try to throw them off so it's not unreasonable.

[00:26:08] I think we're all sensitive to the fact that if this trial is just thrown out because it's totally messed up, then everybody, both sides, the families of the victims, have to get dragged through this whole thing again and that's not fair to them because they've been

[00:26:29] through enough at this point. You want to have a good clean trial where he gets a very fair trial and the jury weighs and chooses an outcome and whether that's an acquittal or a conviction,

[00:26:43] there's some level of finality there. Obviously, if he's convicted, there's always going to be appeals attempts but I think the question is how good are the appeals attempts? Anybody can

[00:26:55] file an appeal but what is it a realistic? Is there some kind of huge error at the heart of the case that's developing that will automatically generate a successful appeal? That's what you'd be

[00:27:08] concerned with and it's not because, oh, he's guilty and he gets off. It's because he didn't get a fair trial in that case and the whole thing was a huge waste of time and that's unnecessary.

[00:27:19] And then as we were preparing to record today, there was another filing in the case. This is something that was certainly not unexpected in the light of last week's Supreme Court decision. We all remember that after Baldwin and Rosie left the case, new attorneys came on, Labrado and

[00:27:42] Scremmond. Now that Rosie and Baldwin have been reinstated, Mr. Scremmond and Labrado have filed a motion to withdraw from the case. No shock there. No shock there. No one expected Richard Allen to go into trial with four defense attorneys. I think those are the high points.

[00:28:05] We'll keep you posted on further developments in the case. 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, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information

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