The State of Indiana has a phrase for everything that went wrong at Richard Allen's trial: harmless error. The composite sketch the jury never saw — harmless. The bullet comparison that initially came back without a match — harmless. The prison videos pla

Ninety-four pages. Every defense argument countered. Every contested ruling defended. And one glaring omission that defense attorney Bob Motta identifies as the central weakness in the State's position: the man whose confessions built this case told his prison psychiatrist he shot the girls. They were not shot.

This week's review of the most critical stories features Motta's full three-part analysis of the Indiana Attorney General's response to Richard Allen's appeal. The AG filed its brief on March 26, calling Allen's conviction "conclusive and irrefutable" and urging the Court of Appeals to affirm the 130-year sentence. The brief addresses three categories of defense arguments: the constitutionality of the home search, the voluntariness of the confessions, and the trial court's evidentiary rulings — including the exclusion of alternative suspect theories, a composite sketch witness, and expert testimony challenging the bullet comparison.

Motta breaks down the State's strategy across three sessions. First, the procedural architecture — the waiver arguments designed to eliminate most of the appeal before substance is reached, the assertion that 13 months of solitary confinement as a pretrial detainee doesn't meet the coercion threshold, and the religious conversion explanation offered for why Allen confessed. Second, the two factual problems the brief doesn't solve — the wrong cause of death in the confessions and the van timeline, where surveillance footage and FBI cell phone data obtained by the defense allegedly show the vehicle arriving after Libby German's phone had stopped moving. The State's response to the van issue: the defense didn't file the paperwork correctly. Third, what comes next — the defense reply brief, the potential for oral arguments, what a partial reversal looks like for a man serving 130 years, and what the five percent appellate reversal rate actually measures.

No DNA. No murder weapon. No direct eyewitness identification. The confessions were the case. And the State's brief never explains the factual error at their center.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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