Prosecutors strongly criticized the recent effort by Richard Allen’s defense lawyers to overturn his murder conviction. In response to the defense’s “motion to correct errors,” prosecutors argued that all the evidence presented was not new and had been known to the defense long before the trial.
Allen was convicted last year of killing Indiana teenagers Abby Williams and Libby German in 2017 and sentenced to 130 years in prison.
Recently, Allen’s legal team sought to invalidate his conviction by submitting a motion that included a supposed confession from a now deceased individual and raised concerns about the timeline of the crime according to the state.
Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland refuted the defense’s claim of presenting new evidence, emphasizing that the alleged confession had been in the possession of the defense attorneys since January of last year.
A man named Ron Logan, who owned the land where the teens bodies were found and died in January 2022, reportedly told a fellow inmate that he had killed the girls. But, McLeland said, the defense failed to mention in its motion that the inmate who reported the alleged confession “miserably” failed a polygraph examination when investigators looked deeper into the story.
Further, McLeland noted, the defense “made a choice not to fully explore or present” the claim during trial.
McLeland also noted that several of the details in the confession were directly contradicted by the evidence.
The defense also challenged the state’s contention of a white van that prosecutors said had spooked Allen, prompting him to kill the girls. They claimed that surveillance footage showed that van in the area several minutes after the state said, but McLeland countered that the defense attorneys had come up with their timeline “unverified by legitimate means as to date and time.” He said they offered “zero evidence” to back up their version of the timeline.
McLeland called on the court to reject the defense motion.
“The simplest answer is that a Motion to Correct Error only applies to newly discovered evidence,” he said. “From the Defense’s own admissions this is not newly discovered evidence but rather evidence they had been provided long before trial.”
