[Ppnews] Part 3 - A dozen reasons the 'Omaha Two' deserve a new trial

[Political Prisoner News]

Original Content at 
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Framed-by-the-FBI--A-doze-by-Michael-Richardson-090304-194.html

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March 4, 2009

Framed by the FBI: A dozen reasons the 'Omaha Two' deserve a new trial (3 of 6)

By Michael Richardson

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On August 17, 1970, an Omaha, Nebraska policeman, 
Larry Minard, was murdered in an ambush bombing 
at a vacant house.  Two men, Edward Poindexter 
and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice), are 
serving life sentences at the Nebraska State 
Penitentiary for his killing.  The pair were 
leaders of Omaha's chapter of the Black Panther 
Party.  Most people assume justice was done in 
the case and little effort has been made by the 
news media to dig into the hidden aspects of the crime.

Poindexter has a new trial request pending before 
the Nebraska Supreme Court and an examination of 
the record, much of it still hidden by Federal 
Bureau of Investigation censors, reveals a dozen 
reasons to question the outcome of the trial.

New Trial Reason Five:  Raleigh House, the dynamite supplier who walked free

The official version of the case, testified to at 
the preliminary hearing and at trial by Duane 
Peak--the confessed bomber, is that Raleigh 
House, a Black Panther member, supplied the dynamite that killed Larry Minard.

House never faced formal charges for supplying 
the explosives.  Out of the 13 people arrested 
while Peak was at large during the first weekend 
after the bombing, one suspect was released after 
just one night in jail--Raleigh House.  Even more 
unusual, House did not have to post $10,000 bail 
like some of the others; instead, he was released 
on his own recognizance.  Police told the Omaha 
World-Herald that House was ordered released by 
assistant prosecutor Arthur O'Leary, the man to 
whom truth does not matter that would soon 
thereafter question Peak about the crime.

House suspiciously shows up twice more; in 
testimony to a congressional committee, and in a 
clandestine FBI memo about the Omaha Panther 
activists.  Federal agents and Omaha police had 
recruited informants within the Black Panther 
group as part of the campaign to disrupt the organization.

House was listed as an officer of the local 
Panther group on an Omaha police memo provided to 
Congress, but when police captain Murdock Platner 
testified before the U.S. House Committee on 
Internal Security, the role of House as supplier 
of dynamite was dropped and Mondo we Langa was 
falsely cited as the source instead of House.

House's name also appears on a secret memorandum 
from the Omaha FBI office to J. Edgar Hoover 
dated August 15, 1970 just two days before the 
fatal bombing.  Redactions by FBI censors do not 
make House's inclusion in the secret memo 
completely clear.  A plan to discredit Ed 
Poindexter and the Omaha chapter of the Black 
Panthers with a bogus letter addressed to David 
Hilliard at national headquarters was being 
proposed and Hoover's permission was 
sought.  House is cited as a source of a previous 
letter to the Black Panther Party newspaper.

Regardless of House's role in bogus letters, 
mention of his name by the FBI to Hoover just two 
days before Minard's killing is not likely to 
have resulted in such easy get-out-of-jail-free 
treatment the following week unless he was an informant.

The Nebraska Supreme Court justices reviewing 
Poindexter's appeal will no doubt recoil at the 
idea that Minard was killed with explosives 
supplied by a police informant but cannot escape 
the reality that House walked free despite Peak's 
testimony he supplied the dynamite.

New Trial Reason Six:  The unknown dynamite 
arrests of three men--cases dismissed

On July 28, 1970, three weeks before the ambush 
bombing that killed Larry Minard, a car with 
three young men was stopped in Omaha and found to 
have several dozen sticks of stolen 
dynamite.  Luther Golden Payne, Lamont Mitchell, 
and Conrad Delano Gray were arrested and charged 
with possession of explosives.

News of the arrest was withheld from the public 
by cooperative reporters.  The Omaha World-Herald 
had regular access to the fourth floor squadroom 
at police headquarters where the arrest logs were 
daily made available to crime beat reporters.

When the trio appeared in court the complaining 
witness against them was Omaha detective Jack 
Swanson, who allegedly found dynamite in Mondo we 
Langa's basement several weeks later.  All three 
men were in jail at the time of the bombing so 
could not have directly participated in the crime.

The court files of the three men caught in 
possession of dynamite tell no details of the 
case.  However, an Omaha Police captain testified 
to a Congressional committee in October 1970 and 
explained the police view that the dynamite used 
in the bombing was the same as that recovered from Payne, Mitchell and Gray.

"Dynamite similar to that stolen from Quick 
Supply in Des Moines was found in the home of one 
of the above.  It is believed it is part of the 
supply from which the bombs were made."

"On July 28, 1970, three young Negroes, one who 
is an ex-Panther, were arrested with 41 2½ inch 
by 16-inch sticks of dynamite in the car.  This 
is also similar to the dynamite taken in burglary 
in Des Moines of Quick Supply."

After Duane Peak's preliminary hearing and the 
case against Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa was 
underway, the three men were allowed out of jail 
on bond.  The cases were continued until after 
the April 1971 trial that sent the two Panther 
leaders to jail and Peak to a juvenile detention 
facility, and then were quietly dismissed within a week after the trial.

The jury that convicted the two Black Panther 
leaders was not told about the cache of stolen 
dynamite that matched the explosives that killed 
Minard.  The jury did not know of the three men 
arrested who would walk free with their cases 
dismissed in exchange for their silence following jury deliberations.
***

Permission to reprint granted

Author's Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance 
writer based in Boston. Richardson writes about 
politics, law, nutrition, ethics, and music. 
Richardson is also a political consultant.

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