Murder Sheet Podcast Talks Delphi Update

Jason Hammer (0:00)

Hammer and Nigel.

Nigel (0:01)

Do you believe these characters?

Jason Hammer (0:03)

They're weird of us.

Áine Cain (0:04)

So let's rock it!

Jason Hammer (0:06)

My name is Nigel, Jason Hammer, right over there with a pair of special guests on the hotline.

Nigel (0:12)

Kevin Greenlee, Áine Cain from the Murder Sheet Podcast. Friends of the program, they have been covering the Delphi murders from the very beginning, from the moment that it took place, through the trial and now the appeals process. They join us here on the hotline. Áine, we'll start with you.

Walk me through what we learned today.

Áine Cain (0:37)

Absolutely. And thank you guys so much for having us. So today, we're the oral arguments in the Richard Allen case. What this is, is the step of the appeal where Richard Allen's attorneys and attorneys from the state are sort of duking it out in court in front of the appellate judges. And one side, obviously Richard Allen's side, calling for a new trial, they want to redo. And the other side, the state side is saying, hey, the verdict was fair, we should just leave that in place. And the judges are basically like teachers during some sort of oral exam, peppering both sides with a ton of pointed questions.

Jason Hammer (1:10)

Why do they want a redo?

Áine Cain (1:13)

So they highlighted three specific issues. One, they said they felt the prison was inherently coercive, even though like we typically think of wrongful confessions as something where like you're confessing to a cop who's been really mean to you for hours. They're saying just the fact he was in prison made him so sad that he confessed. They're also saying that the probable cause, the cops were lying, they didn't really go into that one that much today. It was a lot about the confessions, it was a lot about his mental health. And then what was the other one, Kevin? We gotta breeze through them.

Kevin Greenlee (1:45)

The third one was they claimed that the defense did not get an opportunity to present their chosen defense in court. Namely, their big theory was that the crime was actually committed by a group of odinists or white supremacists.

Nigel (1:59)

Okay, and Kevin, we'll stay with you on this one because I know you've got a bit of a legal background here.

One of the things we talked about earlier in the show is maybe that's a crazy idea, maybe it's not, I don't know, but I just was not a fan of the transparency or the lack thereof in the first trial. It might be a lunatic thing to say, it was odinist, and I don't know if they can back it up or not, but the fact there were no cameras in that courtroom and the defense also gets to say, wait a minute, we didn't even get to put our main thing out there. I think that was a problem. Do you buy that or not?

Kevin Greenlee (2:38)

I have a lot of concern about the fact that there was a problem with transparency, because I think that raises a lot of questions in the minds of people like yourself or people who, unlike Áine and I, were not there. And most people obviously could not be there.

I think that the trial was conducted fairly, but I wish you and the rest of the world would have an opportunity to see that and see how these things were adjudicated. I think it's a disgrace that there was a little transparency in this trial.

Jason Hammer (3:10)

I think there was probably a... There was a discrepancy on what people were experiencing inside the courtroom, as opposed to what we were all theorizing outside of the courtroom. Is that kind of a fair thing to say, a broad statement?

Áine Cain (3:28)

I think you just summed it up, because I'll tell you, I saw the defense attempt to bring up this odinist defense in the courtroom. This was a pre-trial hearing. It lasted three days. I saw the judge consider it and give it a chance. And the odinism theory fell apart on its own merits. It fell apart like wet tissue paper.

I couldn't even believe that they put all their eggs in that basket, instead of maybe a different theory, or just focusing on the errors in the state's case, issues in the state case. So honestly, when I look at odinism, I think of that as a weird, satanic panic clown show that they were doing for like, I don't know, because it was interesting to the media. I don't see it as a really valid theory, but no one would know that because like, no one got to see this except like, a small group of people.