Allman
A former Edinburgh man convicted of binding and threatening a woman during a sexual assault was ordered Wednesday to serve 28 years in prison.
On Dec. 5, a six-man, six-woman Bartholomew Circuit Court jury found Teddy Albert Allman, 51, guilty of rape while compelled by force with a deadly weapon. On that felony charge, Judge Kelly Benjamin sentenced Allman to 35 years in prison, with 28 years executed and seven on probation.
Benjamin also handed down 16 additional years for criminal confinement while armed with a deadly weapon, as well as six more years for intimidation with the use of a deadly weapon.
But the judge indicated there is a judicial requirement that the two smaller sentences run concurrently, rather than consecutively, with the time Allman received for rape.
Allman said he has suffered mental illness since he was 13 and is currently battling a heart condition that could shorten his life. That was not disputed by either the judge or the prosecution on Wednesday.
But one fact withheld during the trial was that Allman entered a guilty plea to failing to register as a sex or violent offender. Last July, he was given a 547-day sentence for the Level 6 felony. But since he’s been in jail for the past four years, the sentence is limited to the time he had already served.
An unusual aspect of the case is that Allman made a video and audio recording of his attack on the female victim that took place in a mobile home community in Elizabethtown on Sept. 10, 2018. At one point, Allman can be heard on the recording stating the date and time out loud, as if he was keeping some form of a record.
Evidence indicates Allman, who had a knife, had punched the woman in the face, bound her hands and legs with twist ties, and bit one of her hands during the sexual assault.
The defendant was under a restraining order to stay away from the victim at the time of the attack. Allman’s criminal history shows identical restraining orders issued in the past by three other women, the judge said.
When questioned by detectives, Allman claimed the victim invited him over and seduced him. However, investigators say a footprint on the door shows he forced his way into the victim’s home.
“You said you never tied her up, and there was no rape,” Benjamin told the defendant. “You took a video of it, and still you denied it.”
Before handing down her sentence, Benjamin spent several minutes listing the many times that Allman kept changing his accounts concerning his crimes.
“It’s like you need a road map to follow all of your stories, because they simply aren’t true,” the judge said.
While Allman said in court that he had not used recreational drugs for days before the assault, an investigator in the case stated the defendant told him that he had been high and was still trying to piece together what took place in the victim’s home.
Some of the more unbelievable stories told in court were that Allman was somehow forced to assault the woman because his life was being threatened by the Aryan Brotherhood. He also claimed he heard a state social worker call the victim a profane name before telling Allman that the victim deserved to be shot in the head.
One of the few consistent things about Allman over the last four years has been his refusal to accept responsibility for his own actions, Bartholomew County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Joshua Scherschel said.
An example was when the defendant took the stand in his own defense Wednesday. When asked if he had anything he wanted to say before the judge pronounced the sentence, Allman claimed the victim had pulled a knife on him, instead of the other way around. The defendant called it “a huge misrepresentation at the trial.”
“It just doesn’t stop when you start to blame someone else,” Benjamin said to Allman. “You show absolutely and completely no remorse. Nothing even close.”
Other sentencing factors the judge cited include Allman’s convictions on three felony cases and eight misdemeanors. Of the nine times the defendant had been previously placed on probation, he broke the terms of his release five times, Benjamin said.
She also cited psychological testing in the pre-sentence report that there is a very high risk that Allman would commit further crimes. There is also a 70% chance the defendant will commit domestic abuse upon family members if he were set free.
But the most dangerous of Allman’s characteristics is that he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, Benjamin said. She added that a defendant cannot be rehabilitated if they refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoing.
This story is shared from The (Columbus) Republic, a sister newspaper to the Daily Journal.