INDIANAPOLIS — Special Judge Fran Gull in the Delphi double murder trial has issued a Gag Order to prohibit the State and the Defense and investigators from talking to the media about the case against Richard Allen.
But that Order doesn’t extend to the attorney representing Allen’s defense team against the judge’s attempt to boot them off the case and the prosecutor’s Contempt Complaint against the lawyers. That attorney recently spoke with FOX59.
”It seems personal, but again, I don’t know why,” said David Hennessy. “I don’t know what they’ve done to make people so angry.”
Hennessy is a wily and cantankerous Indianapolis defense lawyer who was looking to wind down his 50-year legal career when he witnessed Judge Gull’s attempt last fall to bar attorneys Bradley Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin from Allen’s case.
”I’m the attorney for the attorneys,” Hennessy said. “Basically, in my opinion, their representation was too zealous for her. They were doing too good and exposing the investigation for weaknesses that it had.”
Baldwin and Rozzi were appointed by Judge Gull, the second judge assigned to the case. The originating Carroll County judge, who signed the initial search warrant and Probable Cause Affidavit against Allen, bowed out less than two weeks after Allen’s arrest for the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German near the Monon High Bridge on Feb. 13, 2017.
Allen wasn’t arrested until October 2022, when his original interview with an investigator, given within days of the killings, wasn’t rediscovered in the investigative files until more than five-and-a-half years later.
In that misfiled interview, Allen admitted being on the bridge the day the girls were killed.
Within two weeks of their assignment in November 2022, and reacting to multiple media requests for comment, Baldwin and Rozzi issued a three-page press release dismantling the State’s investigation.
Shortly thereafter, Judge Gull issued the Gag Order the defense attorneys are accused of violating.
Hennessy said that, upon review, the attorneys were late to game following more than five years of public comment on the case by investigators and a prior Carroll County prosecutor.
“The state-sponsored media presence over the years, over 138 (contacts), and the defense lawyers had one press conference (sic) but there was not a gag order, so that can’t be Contempt, in my opinion, because it didn’t violate an order.”
What followed was an inadvertent email mistake by Baldwin, who intended to share with his co-counsel a general log of Defense Discovery items. Baldwin instead sent the information to the wrong “Brad” in his system, a mistake that wasn’t confirmed to the prosecutor and the court for several months.
Hennessy argues that type of email misdirection is common.
“It didn’t have any real substance,” Hennessy said. “It had a line of what discovery was on a particular flash drive, simply organizational, so the attorneys could know where to look for those items.”
Then came the late September/early October 2023 leak of confidential crime scene evidence illicitly taken from Baldwin’s office without his knowledge and leaked to social media posters.
”They alleged and somehow wanted to hold Baldwin responsible for a former associate and close friend taking unauthorized pictures of pictures,” said Hennessy. “We never got to the bottom of it because he lawyered up, and we never knew how many he took, but the ones that ended up on the internet that they were complaining about, Mr. Rozzi testified that that didn’t come from the Defense, there was two of them at least that they had not prepared or ever seen before. It’s kind of like victim-bashing. If somebody burglarizes my home and finds something indiscreet and then puts it on the internet, how is that my fault?”
In the Indirect Contempt Complaint, Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland argued that Baldwin’s conversations with the former associate that were also leaked to a social media poster violated the Gag Order by sharing confidential case information.
“Its brainstorming, and they all do it,” said Hennessy. “And lawyers just don’t consult with other lawyers, because if you’re going to a jury trial, you’re not gonna have lawyers on the jury, so you want to talk to people who are more representative of the type of people you will have on a jury to get their view of the evidence because it will guide you in what to present and how to present it.”
Hennessy said Baldwin and Rozzi were never told they couldn’t talk about the case to advisors.
”They both were a party to an in-chambers conference where, in fact, that issue was raised about consulting with both attorneys and non-attorneys, and it was explained to them that, ‘No, that would not be a violation, that the Order was more any media, any public discussions of the case.”
Hennessy noted that McLeland’s Contempt Complaint was filed shortly after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Judge Gull did not have the authority or follow the proper procedure to remove the attorneys from Allen’s side.
”He filed for Contempt the day after they were reinstated, and his allegations in there, most of them were over a year old,” Hennessy said. “And he could have filed it at any time, so it was a reaction, in my opinion, to the reinstatement of the lawyers.”
Hennessy argued in Motions to have both McLeland and Judge Gull recused from hearing the Contempt Complaint due to their participation in the previous unsuccessful attempt to force out Baldwin and Rozzi and as witnesses to the alleged leak and Gag Order misconduct incidents.
”I filed for recusal of the judge and recusal of the prosecutor,” Hennessy said. “She denied them without a hearing.”
Also denied this past week was a Defense attempt to drop the charges against Allen, claiming that Exculpatory Evidence essential to their client’s case — video recordings of other persons mentioned as having potential knowledge of the case — were erased in 2017, but the destruction was unknown until last year.
“The recordings of interviews between Feb. 14-20, 2017, were lost due to human error or were spontaneously lost due to equipment resetting,” wrote the judge who found that the interviewees were not, “suspects at the time the interviews were conducted (and as such), the defendant has failed to show that the (evidence) was material.”
Hennessy said the irony of the Contempt Complaint against his clients for allegedly mishandling evidence while at the same time the exoneration of State investigators for deleting or causing evidence to be destroyed is not lost on him.
”I think the similarities of what you’ve just described speak for themselves,” Hennessy said. “And the discrepancy is apparent.”
This past week, the Defense and State filed responses aimed at each other over Allen’s claims that prosecutors and investigators have not fulfilled their obligations to provide potential evidence to his attorneys in a timely and complete manner.
The Defense is calling for a Franks hearing, which would air out those allegations.
Also pending is Judge Gull’s decision on the pending contempt challenge, one Hennessy imagines the attorneys will appeal if found liable.
”We’re dedicated to exonerating them,” Hennessy said. “And we don’t have any control over what the judge decides, but if it’s adverse to either of my clients, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Rozzi, we will certainly seek redress and ask higher courts to look at the propriety of any such finding.”
Hennessy said the Defense team has been distracted from preparing its case by the fight before the Supreme Court to be reassigned to Allen’s side and the potential of the contempt citation.
”If he gets convicted and the conviction is upheld on appeal, then a different set of lawyers could come back and look at all of the sideshows involving the attorneys and argue that it affected their representation and thereby harmed Mr. Allen.”
Jury selection is set to begin in Fort Wayne in Judge Gull’s courtroom on May 13th with the case moving to Carroll County for a trial that is anticipated to last the rest of the month.
