The jury in State vs. Richard Allen will not see the crime scene

Liberty German, left, and Abigail Williams. Archive photo/The Comet

The jury in the Delphi double murder trial will not see the crime scene.
Richard Allen’s defense team withdrew its request for visitation Thursday during a hearing in Allen County.

Allen was charged with four counts of aggravated murder in connection with the deaths of Abigail Williams and Liberty German. The Carroll County teens went missing on Feb. 13, 2017, after being dropped off for a hike on the Monon High Bridge Trail. When the girls didn’t arrive at the agreed pickup time, the family began searching for them. Police were called and search parties worked through the night. Their bodies were found shortly after noon the next day not far from the banks of Deer Creek.

Hearing on Thursday

On Thursday, special judge Fran Gull ruled on several outstanding motions and accepted two for consideration. Among them was the State’s motion in Limine, which sought to prohibit the admission into evidence of two composite sketches prepared based on information provided by witnesses on the trail on February 13, 2017.

At Thursday’s hearing, Assistant District Attorney Stacey Diener explained that the composite sketches were intended for investigative purposes and to generate leads and not to identify Richard Allen.

She called retired FBI special agent and forensic scientist Thomas Plantz as a witness. Plantz served as an FBI instructor at Quantico, teaching investigative interrogation to forensic artists.

He said forensic artists use a cognitive interview technique that can take hours to obtain information for a sketch.

“I want to take her back to a moment in time,” Plantz said. He wants the interviewee to retrace the hours before they saw a potential suspect, the moment they saw them, and the time afterward.

“No piece of information is insignificant… sights, sounds, feelings,” he said.

Plantz said he strives for the highest level of detail.

“Through memory we can do three things: encode the memory, store (the memory) and retrieve it later,” he said. Each individual processes these things in their own way.

“The eyes are the window to the soul.”

Defense attorney Jennifer Auger questioned Plantz about his 2017 interview with one of the witnesses from the trial.

“You would never tell a witness to cheat, would you?” she asked.

“No, but I used the word cheat code,” Plantz said.

The second sketch of the person believed to be the suspect in the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German.

“They told (the witness) it was OK to cheat,” she said. She then played a video of the interview between Plantz and the witness. During the interview, Plantz was heard saying, “We can cheat” as he showed her the video, recorded in German, of “Bridge Guy” walking across the bridge on February 13, 2017.

Plantz said he brought the video into the interview to “evoke a memory.” He went on to say that he referred to it as a cheat code for a video game. The video did not show a clear image of the man’s face, he said.

“When the face is not there (not shown), it is used to trigger cognitive memory,” he said.

Diener asked Plantz whether the images created by forensic artists were subjective. Plantz said yes. The images are created based on the information provided by the witness and the illustrator and are therefore subjective from two perspectives.

Diener then argued that the sketches should be banned because they were double hearsay and inherently subjective. She said it would mislead and confuse her if it were shown to the jury at the start of the trial. The images would “shape the jury,” she said.

Auger said the sketches are not considered hearsay if they were created by interviewing a witness shortly after meeting the suspect. In this case, the first sketch was created three days after the witness saw a man on the Monon High Bridge Trail on the day the girls disappeared.

Gull said she would discuss and decide the motion Friday morning before opening comments.

Confessional behavior

Gull said she would allow testimony from inmates, correctional officers and Indiana Department of Corrections employees about Allen’s conduct during confessions at the Westville and Wabash Valley correctional facilities.

“You can’t attest to (Allen’s) guilt or innocence,” she said.

Metallurgist

Gull is also expected to decide Friday whether the defense can call William Tobin a metallurgist. Tobin is expected to testify about the flawed methodology used by state and defense firearms experts. The witnesses are expected to testify that a .40-caliber cartridge found at the crime scene near the girls’ bodies was fired through Allen’s Sig Sauer pistol, which was seized during a search of his home .

Assistant District Attorney James Luttrell argued that Tobin was not an expert and would confuse the jury.

The defense said Tobin had extensive experience working with the FBI in a subfield of tool mark identification.

Jurors

Twelve jurors, eight women and four men, as well as four alternates, two men and two women, were sworn in for the trial.

The jury is sequestered. There will be a supervised family day on Sunday. Their phones and chargers were collected by bailiffs and placed in bags. In the evening they can call home under the supervision of the bailiffs. Gull told the media that there will be a television room where the jury can watch films. She said a selection of DVDs were taken to where they are kept.

Seating in the courtroom

Of the 72 seats in the courtroom, 30 go to the families (ten to the German family, 10 to the Williams family and 10 to the Allen family). Twelve seats are reserved for members of the renowned media coalition. That leaves only 30 seats for the public. These places are allocated on a first come, first served basis. On Thursday at 8:50 p.m. there were already eight people in line outside the courthouse.

Opening statements in the trial begin at 9 a.m. Friday in Carroll County Circuit Court.