re: Delphi, IN Murders Trial Thread

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Wow. I just watched a brief video from a reporter who was inside. She said the jury began deliberations at 1:25. Wish TV says court resumed at 1:07, so yes, rebuttal was apparently very short.

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Plus you have to factor in the final instructions, which can take anywhere from 5-30 mins depending on how much of the instruction was read before arguments.

Rebuttal on the Wish TV site. Interesting ending.....

McLeland begins his rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument.

He says it’s been a long 3 or 4 weeks, that now it is time to hand the case over to the jurors. He tells them “you’re in the driver’s seat.” “I’m not up here to tell you how to feel.”

McLeland says the defense did not back up their claims, that the prosecution has witnesses on the trail that day and that they simply reaffirm that Allen was there.

He tells the jury that witnesses after the murders on the high bridge do not matter.

McLeland points at Allen and says he used a gun to scare them. He says Libby had a “blood outline” of a tear on her face.

He tells the jury that Oberg’s testing was verified, that it links Allen to the crimes.

News 8’s Kyla Russell says Allen is extremely engaged and looking at Baldwin with disbelief.

McLeland says “words matter, why don’t Allen’s words matter?”

He says there are two victims in the case, Abby and Libby. He says “they are Allen’s victims. But they aren’t just victims, they are heroes.”

McLeland says “Libby said someday she is going to help police solve crimes, that’s exactly what she did.”

Sounds like the jury ended deliberations about 45 mins early today.

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True Hidden Crime posted a short update. She said both prosecution and defense did very well with closing arguments.

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I’m glad you switched to her from Burkhardt. She has basically just relayed the facts each day per her notes (which several YouTubers think are the best and most thorough—I think they have a little group that gets together and makes sure they all heard the same things and didn’t miss anything) and is coming at her daily reports from as close to neutral as possible. She was an actual journalist at one time, I believe. Though maybe that was on tv and more because she’s pretty and comes off as likable than anything else. Nothing against Burkhardt, they just have different agendas with what they’re doing there.

That said, I don’t think you can mention Lauren from Hidden True Crime without also mentioning that she’s married to a forensic psychologist who’s not on all the time, but is basically the star of the show when he does appear. He seems very ethical (really smart, too), and tries to show both sides, though he’s usually playing devil’s advocate for 1. He will give his opinion, but doesn’t like to do so in big cases during trials. I think I heard him mention the other day that he feels a lot more free talking on their Patreon.

One thing struck me the other day when he was talking about the confessions. He was able to present a case for them being real and being fake—or wrong—based on the testimonies of Allen’s psychologists and each side’s expert witnesses.

But it was pretty clear that he thought the confessions were true. Maybe not all completely “accurate” on the details, but real. He said that someone diagnosed with whatever psychosis Allen was would certainly be more likely to confess to an authority figure than someone without that diagnoses. They want to please authority figures, become compliant, and can be easily coerced into lying. However, he says while there was evidence of this psychosis, there was no evidence of coercion by law enforcement or prison personnel. Not saying that didn’t happen, just that that evidence wasn’t presented. He completely agreed that the defense did provide enough evidence to show how the prison conditions could cause someone like Allen to become that particular version of psychotic after a while, but he just didn’t see any evidence of LE trying to get him to confess after he retained counsel that would have make that illegal. But he also said the confessions started about 3 weeks before he was officially diagnosed anyway.

(To be cont.)

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I’m glad you switched to her from Burkhardt.

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I never switched, it's just a matter of time constraint. I've been watching WTHR, True Hidden Crime, and Burkhart. Just too much content from all of them to keep up with every minute from all of them. I stopped bringing stuff from Burkhart because no one is going to go watch a 5-6hr video or sift through it. She is good, but the stuff is too long.

For True Hidden Crime, her husband is on with her today, I think they may still be live. I'll watch it later. I was scanning the comments on her channel - it's a mixed bag. He did mention feeling less constrained on Patreon - I watched a little when they first started. When he said that, I stopped watching, assuming most of the substantive stuff will be on Patreon, so I'll skim the video later.

Burkhart still manages to be thorough despite her defense-lean. She mentioned something about Allen's phones that was a solid point for the prosecution that they didn't really hammer or make good use of - not that it's a deal maker or breaker, but probably deserved more attention and probing. Her audience though is overwhelmingly defense-friendly.

About the confessions - the nature of his confinement is a deal breaker for me. You just can't do that to someone and get anything resembling normal behavior. When a forensic psych starts talking about these things, I am always reminded that in fields like psychology, a correlation coefficient below 0.5 is often considered noteworthy, and effect sizes of small, trivial amounts are often trumpeted as meaningful. Psychology is one of the most over-promising and under-delivering fields out there. Their ideas of certainty are grossly removed from those in physiology and are in another universe from things like physics.

And it's worrisome that the prosecution tells us that the confessions were such revelations and marked an inflection point in the path to trial, and he confessed so many times, yet they don't have anything on video. All this video of his behavior, the craziness, yet somehow nothing on the confession. I'd want to see - is he giving details in a confession while smearing feces on his face and despondent or is he lucid and grounded? Are statements from LE, from guards, from the prison psych all accurate and reflect what you see in the video? That said, if his confessions were in complete alignment with verifiable facts and didn't have vague statements like "I must have done something with the gun", then I'd lean toward guilty, if they were made before the effects of his treatment could manifest. But they don't have that fact pattern here. And they have no other evidence otherwise.

I hope I'm not advocating for a guilty man, a murderer, to go free, but I'm surely not going to advocate for a conviction without evidence and proof. Their case is based on speculation, fueled by a LE team that was, at best, sloppy and ended up giving us zero evidence of culpability. Add Weber, who seems as crazy as Allen, and the torture in prison, and I could never vote guilty.

Very curious what the prosecution does if it's a hung jury and if Allen goes home or back to jail. Also, when does the state get sued for his treatment in prison?

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I don’t think there’s any way the judge lets them give up after only 1 full day of deliberations, no matter how deadlocked they say they are.

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You are probably correct on this. I'd assumed they would be so far apart they come back again on Friday and say it's hopeless. Apparently Saturday is a court day, so they would deliberate then. Sunday is family day, but if they are deliberating, then no family time. Maybe the judge keeps them till Saturday, but I think these people are ready to go home and they'll put their foot down with the judge. Just my hunch.

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Especially since he will assuredly be retried, and the jury pool for an additional trial can only be even more polluted by what will have been discussed by the time they’re ready to seat for the next trial.

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Good point about the jury pool. I still don't know if he'll be retried. They had years to make this case and they presented a pretty weak one.

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There is no evidence that Allen committed murder.
No DNA.
No fiber.
No footprints.
No witnesses.

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Again, there's no evidence ANYONE committed the murders. There's no evidence of anyone else being there BUT Allen.

There's really no evidence that I've seen it WASNT Allen. But Allen was there and the best evidence available is that it was Allen.

I can't disagree I don't know if I could call him guilty either unless there was more evidence the Jury has seen. I just don't agree with you seemingly trying to make it out to be someone else.

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I just don't agree with you seemingly trying to make it out to be someone else.

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I don't know why you keep reading that into my comments. The issue here is whether or not Allen committed murder. The verdict is on that question alone. Either it's proven BARD or not. I realize that if one says 'not guilty' then that necessarily implies someone else did it, but the question here is whether or not Allen did it - you don't have to make any case at all for another person, you just have to determine whether it was Allen.

This clip from WTHR is pretty good. Their hosts point out that the jury is now in day 23 of sequester. I'm guessing they are ready to go home. Their legal analyst (an attorney that has done this work on both sides) is pretty good.

She makes some good points about the jury instructions - that when two competing ideas clash, take the one that is favorable to the defendant - that a reasonable doubt can arise from evidence or a lack of evidence, things like that.

She is asked if the state met its burden. She does not believe the state met its burden. She makes a good point that the state went out on a limb to declare that bridge guy is the killer and that Allen is bridge guy but then all those witnesses gave descriptions differing from Allen, so that could be a huge source of doubt for the jury.

She mentions that all efforts to tie Allen to the crime are contested. She also mentions something that may have weight with jurors: the tracking for the phone of one of the girls would put the phone right on Weber's driveway, that led to a garage with sticks like those at the body location, and a house that had a gun that was not excluded by testing, and she points out that is a situation where a reasonable interpretation would point away from Allen (and to someone else), which invokes the idea that clashing ideas must be viewed favorable to the defendant. She says the confession stuff can be powerful on the jury, but on balance she believed the state failed to meet its burden. I don't know if that means she felt the confession was false or that the details to confirm it (like Weber's van) were not established strongly enough.

Her part is about 5.5 minutes in length, cued up. Starts at 38:55

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it would be good to know what Allen was referring to by that statement, assuming that he's the guy etc etc.

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That comment could mean, 'look down the hill, don't go down there, there's a creepy guy'

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