[Ppnews] Part 6 - Why 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-090307-446.html

March 7, 2009

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

By Michael Richardson

On August 17, 1970, an Omaha, Nebraska police officer, 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 Eleven:  Expert witness Tom Owen

The recording of the 911 call that lured Larry Minard to his death was  
destroyed after the murder trial without the jury ever listening to  
the voice of the killer.  J. Edgar Hoover had directed the FBI Crime  
Laboratory to withhold a report of a voice analysis the lab conducted.

Years later a copy of the recording made by a police dispatcher  
emerged and in 2006 was subjected to sophisticated scientific analysis  
by forensics expert Tom Owen.  Owen is an internationally recognized  
audio forensic annalist and listened to exemplars of the 1970  
emergency call and a contemporary recording of Duane Peak repeating  
the same words.

Owen, who conducts professional seminars on voice analysis, concluded  
Duane Peak did not make the deadly call.  Owen confirmed what some  
have long suspected because the voice on the tape does not sound like  
a 15 year-old's voice.  The Omaha World-Herald described the voice as  
"deep and drawling".

Owen testified in May 2007 that the voices did not match with a  
detailed phrase-by-phrase courtroom explanation of the discrepancies.

In a October 13, 1970 COINTELPRO memo from the Omaha FBI to Hoover,  
Omaha Assitance Chief of Police Glen Gates is quoted as requesting no  
lab report.  "Assistant COP GLENN GATES, Omaha PD, advised that he  
feels any use of this call might be prejudicial to the police murder  
trial."

If Peak didn't make the call about a woman screaming then he is hiding  
the identity of an older relative or accomplice and destroying his own  
credibility against Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa.

Poindexter's attorney, Robert Bartle, played the recording for the  
Nebraska Supreme Court in a hushed courtroom and the justices heard  
what Poindexter's jury did not--a killer's voice.  The issue of the  
recording came before the Nebraska Supreme Court a quarter-century  
earlier with Mondo's appeal.  Then the state high court dismissed the  
appeal because the tape had not been analyzed by an expert.

The technology used by Owen to determine the voices were not a match  
did not exist at the time of the initial, secret FBI analysis.  Judge  
Russell Bowie, who Poindexter first asked to address Owen's expert  
testimony, ignored the recording in a District Court decision.   
However, Bowie did accept the duplicate recording as an exhibit  
putting the issue squarely before the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Oral argument was heard in early October and a decision is pending on  
Poindexter's request for a new trial.

If Tom Owen is right, one of Larry Minard's killers was never  
apprehended and police dropped the search.

New Trial Reason Twelve:  Injustice of  Stone v. Powell

Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) appealed his murder conviction  
for the bombing death of policeman Larry Minard.  While Mondo didn't  
get relief from the state court system he found an impartial judge in  
federal court.

U. S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom heard Mondo's appeal for  
violations of his 4th Amendment rights.  After listening to testimony  
from a police lieutenant, James Perry, Judge Urbom rejected Perry's  
account of events and found that Mondo we Langa's civil rights were  
indeed violated by Omaha police.

"Therefore, it is the holding of this court that the police were not  
rightfully on the premises of David Rice on the night of August 22,  
1970, and thus all of the evidence obtained by the search of the house  
that night was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment and should  
not have been received into evidence at petitioner's criminal trial."

Judge Urbom ruled, "Therefore, the petitioner must either be released  
from custody or granted a new trial free of the tainted evidence."

The prosecution appealed and a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit  
U.S. Court of Appeals reviewed Urbom's decision to grant a new trial.   
The federal appellate judges examined carefully the police  
justification for entering Mondo's residence without a proper warrant.

"In fact, the testimony of the various police officers at the  
evidentiary hearing held before the district court strongly suggests  
that the police had no evidence whatever that Peak was at petitioner's  
house and that they were acting on nothing more than a hunch or random  
guess."

As for Perry's version of events, the three-judge panel was abrupt.   
"After reviewing the record, we find that Judge Urbom's decision to  
discredit this particular testimony was amply supported by the record."

"Moreover, testimony before Judge Urbom suggests that the purpose of  
searching for explosives was an afterthought conceived after the  
police arrived at the house, rather than an urgent emergency, and that  
they decided to apply for a warrant to search for explosives in the  
petitioner's house only because they had not discovered dynamite in  
any of the other locations they had searched earlier in the day."

"We consider it necessary to point out that the record discloses a  
widespread search for the suspects Peak and Poindexter which evinced  
at least a negligent disregard by the Omaha police for the  
constitutional rights of not only petitioner but possibly other  
citizens as well."

The appellate court ordered Mondo we Langa to be freed or retried,  
bringing the total to four federal judges that closely examined the  
case and ordered a new trial.

The prosecution appealed to the United States Supreme Court which  
agreed to hear the case consolidating it with another murder case,  
Stone v. Powell.  Unfortunately for Mondo we Langa the careful  
scrutiny of the facts of his case was over.  Mondo was now just a  
pressure point in an effort to roll back civil liberty decisions of  
the Warren Court.

Time magazine called the case, "important" and described the jockeying  
of the justices in the campaign over rights of criminal defendants.   
Authors Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong discuss the case in their  
book, The Brethren.

"To Burger [Chief Justice Warren Burger], these seemed perfect cases:  
two murderers were trying to overturn their convictions by raising  
technical Fourth Amendment claims.  After the highest states had  
rejected their claims, the men had appealed to the federal courts.   
Under the Constitution, any state prisoner has a right to petition the  
federal courts for a writ of habeas corpus, which required the state  
to show that the imprisonment did not violate the federal Constitution."

"Burger had long wanted to cut off habeas petitions on Fourth  
Amendment claims.  He believed they were almost always frivolous, and  
they clogged the federal courts.  To preclude such petitions--and to  
overrule an important Warren Court precedent--would be a major victory."

The Supreme Court refused to hear the merits of the case and returned  
Mondo we Langa to state court where the outcome was already  
foreshadowed.

Four federal judges ordered a new trial for Mondo yet it never was  
granted and he has remained in maximum-security imprisonment all these  
long years, the victim of both J. Edgar Hoover and Warren Burger's  
political agendas.

The Nebraska Supreme Court now has Ed Poindexter's request for a new  
trial pending.  No date for a decision has been announced.

***

Permission granted to reprint

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.