Defense attorneys were accused Monday of trying to paint the man accused of murdering Delphi teenagers Liberty German and Abigail Williams as the victim.
The allegation was leveled by prosecutor Nick McLeland after a morning during which jurors in Carroll County Court in Indiana were shown graphic prison footage of Richard Allen at times naked, eating his own feces, and smearing it over his body and banging his head repeatedly against his cell door in Westville Correctional Facility.
Allen, 52, has been charged on four counts in relation to the February 13, 2017, abduction and murder of best friends Libby and Abby who disappeared when they went for a hike on the Monon High Bridge trail. He denies them all.
He has been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder which is murder committed during the act of another crime, in this case kidnapping. If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of 130 years in prison.
On Monday, as the trial in the small Indiana town entered its 15th day, Allens attorneys once again pushed to have jurors discount the numerous written and verbal confessions Allen made while awaiting trial by presenting their client as a man driven to a psychotic breakdown by the conditions in which he was held.
Prosecutors in Richard Allens double-murder trial on Monday accused the defense of trying to paint the suspect a victim after the jury was shown disturbing videos of the alleged killer agonizing in solitary confinement
Allen is charged with killing best friends Libby, 14, and Abby, 13, after they went on a hike outside their hometown of Delphi, Indiana, in February 2017
Allen – who was arrested in October 2022 – was held for 13 months in solitary confinement in Westvilles most secure unit, many of them on suicide watch, during which he was constantly monitored and filmed 24/7.
Jurors struggled to watch the two separate videos shown to them in court today.
At times one male juror put his head in his hand and looked away. A female juror turned from the screen and closed her eyes.
The in-cell videos, which had no audio, were shielded from public view in the same way that handheld camcorder movement videos showing Allen being moved around and out of his cell were shown only to the jury when they were shown Saturday morning.
It was a move taken by Judge Frances Gull because of the explicit scenes contained in both tranches of video and out of respect for Allens dignity.
But it is one which has frustrated the friends and families of Libby and Abby who were forced to sit through gruesome and repeatedly shown crime scene and autopsy photos of the girls.
Addressing defense witness Max Baker – the legal intern to Bradly Rozzi who compiled the videos which showed events on April 12, 2023, and May 25 – McLeland accused him of cherry-picking the worst images he could find in a bid to curry sympathy for Allen.
You picked those…videos and I assume you wanted to show the worst conditions he suffered in Westville to try to convince the jury that Mr. Allens the victim, he said.
The in-cell videos of Allen, which had no audio, were shielded from public view and were shown only to the jury on Saturday morning. The now clean-shaven accused double-murderer is seen sitting alongside defense attorney Andrew Baldwin in a court sketch from Saturday
Pictured: Inside the Carroll County courtroom where Richard Allens murder trial entered its 15th day on Monday November 4
Spectators line up to enter the Carroll County Courthouse to sit in on Allens trial on Friday, October 18
Mr. Allen is not the victim in this case, is he? Abigail Williams and Liberty German are the victims.
As with Saturday the large screen on which evidence has been presented to jurors was turned away from the public gallery while the videos, which contain no audio, played out to a silent court.
Rozzi had angled his own laptop screen entirely away from the public gallery meaning no members of the media had any glimpse of the footage as it played out to a clearly shocked jury.
On Saturday some members of the media were able to view the movement videos.
In some Allen was naked, in all he was cuffed or otherwise restrained. In one he knelt, naked, facing a wall while two officers soap him up and wash him down before drying him and placing a black spit hood over his head.
In one Allen, still bearded at the time, was getting a haircut, sitting apparently passive, his hands cuffed behind his backs.
At some point he was dragged along a hallway by two guards who take either arm. In one he appeared to be lying down while guards attempt to get him up.
In another he is naked and placed in a white spit hood.
Another showed him transported to the prisons medical unit, strapped to a chair while he is apparently examined.
Allen received several involuntary injections of the antipsychotic drug Haldol during his time at Westville.
Richard Allen denies murdering Libby and Abby, but the prosecution has pointed to the numerous written and verbal confessions he made while awaiting trial
The two best friends were last seen alive going on their fateful hike to Monon High Bridge in February 2017
Libby and Abby disappeared when they went for a hike on the Monon High Bridge trail
In another he was tased for failing to comply with guard directions.
The movement videos were all taken when Allen was being transported in and out of his cell and filmed between April and June 2023, gleaned from hundreds of hours of footage reviewed by his defense team.
Along with the in-cell videos shown today they depict what the defense has presented as the peak of the serious mental illness and psychotic breakdown they claim Allen suffered because of constant monitoring and his lengthy stay in solitary confinement.
Jurors watched the footage intently, at times one put his hand over his mouth, but they were notably less visibly affected by the videos shown on Saturday than Allens own attorneys.
Jennifer Auger watched with clear discomfort as her colleague Rozzi presented each clip.
At some point Andrew Baldwin, his arm round the back of Allens chair where he sat beside him, looked close to tears.
Earlier Monday jurors heard from neuropsychologist Dr. Polly Westcott who testified that, having reviewed copious records detailing Allens mental health both before and after his incarceration she was confident he was suffering from Major Depressive Disorder with Psychosis.
She said he had dependent personality disorder and, stripped of his support network of his wife, mother and other family, he literally fell apart.