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 played without audio — harmless. The van timeline that doesn't align with the confession — harmless. In 94 pages, the Attorney General's office argues that even if individual rulings were wrong, the overall evidence was so overwhelming that none of it mattered.

This week we look back at the most significant legal developments in the Delphi case. The AG filed a formal response to Allen's appeal on March 26, calling his conviction "conclusive and irrefutable" and urging the Court of Appeals to affirm the 130-year sentence. The brief argues the confessions were voluntary, the search of Allen's home was lawful, and the exclusion of alternative suspect theories was proper — calling the Odinist motive theory "speculative" and "a sideshow."

What the brief does not address is the factual content of the confessions themselves. According to the defense's appeal brief, Allen told his prison psychiatrist he shot the girls. Abby Williams and Libby German were killed with a blade. The State calls the confessions credible and never explains how a man confessing from memory described the wrong cause of death. There was no DNA linking Allen to the scene. No murder weapon was recovered. No direct eyewitness identified him. The confessions were the case — and they contained a fundamental error the State chose not to confront in writing.

The defense's appeal also raises the Betsy Blair sketch — a composite based on a witness who reportedly rated her identification a perfect ten, depicting a man in his twenties with curly hair that does not resemble Allen. The jury never saw it. And surveillance footage and FBI cell phone data, according to the defense, suggest the van that corroborates Allen's confession arrived after Libby's phone had already stopped moving. The State's response to that: the paperwork wasn't filed correctly.

Defense attorney Bob Motta examines what the harmless error doctrine is designed to do — and whether it's being used here to avoid questions the evidence can't answer.

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