Lawyers for accused Indiana child killer Richard Allen say their client is again being mistreated and unnecessarily restrained in prison, which is preventing them from adequately preparing for his trial later this year, the Indianapolis Star reports.
In court papers filed on Friday, Allen’s attorneys asserted overzealous security procedures have hindered their ability to communicate with their client.
The filing recounts a November visit that alleges Allen was “uncomfortably and unnecessarily shackled and chained in a manner resembling Hanible (sic) Lecter, while guards watched through glass panels and the door ajar,” the document reads, according to the Star.
Lecter is the fictional human-eating doctor featured in the film “Silence of the Lambs.”
Allen was moved to a different facility in December, but his lawyers say problems remain. The attorneys described how they were permitted to talk with Allen only through a flap in a solid iron door while he was kept in a cell, and that they were required to sit six feet away from the door.
“In twenty-five years of practicing law in five states, including representing numerous defendants charged with murder, I have never had to conduct an in-custody legal consultation in this fashion,” one of the lawyers wrote, according to the newspaper. “The prison’s visitation arrangement created an environment wherein effectively representing Mr. Allen was a fiction.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, a different set of lawyers for Allen argued in April 2023 that he was being treated inhumanely in jail “akin to those of a prisoner of war.” At the time, his lawyers alleged that he appeared to be “suffering from various psychotic symptoms which counsel would describe as schizophrenic and delusional,” according to the Lafayette Journal & Courier, citing court records.
Authorities arrested Allen in October 2022 and charged him with the 2017 murders of Libby German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 14. Their bodies were found near the Monon High Bridge in Delphi.
Lawyers for Allen have alleged that German and Williams were killed by members of a pagan cult called Odinism and have claimed that Allen has been intimidated by jail guards linked to the group, according to the Star.
Allen’s lawyers are asking that he be transferred out of the custody of the Indiana Department of Correction. His trial is scheduled for October 2024.
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[Feature Photo: Richard Allen/Police Handout; Libby & Abby/Handout]
