The judge overseeing the case of a man accused of murdering two Delphi, Indiana, teenagers refused to throw out evidence obtained through a search of the suspect’s home.
Attorneys for Richard Allen, 51, argued that the probable cause affidavit police used to search Allen’s home contained misleading information, failed to establish what evidence police were looking for, and how that evidence linked to the crime, FOX 59 reported. Judge Fran Gull – whom Allen’s attorneys tried to get removed from the case – ruled on Monday that evidence collected from the search of Allen’s home would stay in.
Allen’s attorneys, recently reinstated Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rozzi, said the search was illegal, but Judge Gull ruled that the court determined the probable cause affidavit “contained information that a reasonable belief existed that evidence of the murders would be found in (Allen’s) home and vehicles.” Gull also argued that the affidavit did not contain false statements and that it did not omit information.
“As the Court has found the Affidavit for issuance of the search warrant was valid, the search itself was reasonable and legal under Indiana law and Fourth Amendment case law,” Gull wrote in her ruling, according to Fox 59.
One of the main pieces of evidence prosecutors say links Allen to the murders of 13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German on a hiking trail in 2017 is an unfired bullet found at the crime scene. The prosecution says this bullet was matched to a Sig Sauer Model P226 found during a search of Allen’s home.
Definitively proving an unspent bullet came from a particular gun is not as simple as the affidavit makes it seem, according to Stephen Gutowski, a certified firearms instructor and reporter who founded The Reload.
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“The forensic techniques used by crime labs to match specific guns to specific bullets have come under heavy scrutiny in recent years,” Gutowski told The Daily Wire in November 2022. “So, I think it’s important to examine claims like this with a healthy dose of skepticism. The idea you could match a mark on the rim of a casing to a specific gun’s extractor seems dubious to me.”
“I could see an argument that an extractor on a certain model of gun could leave a unique marking on an unspent round if the round were cycled through the firearm since the extractor may have dimensions that are different from other firearms,” he added. “However, the Sig Sauer P226 has been an incredibly popular firearm for decades, and it’s unlikely the mass-produced extractors included on each pistol would leave a marking that’s obviously distinguishable from another P226.”
