[Ppnews] Imprisoned Black Panther Ed Poindexter was absent from his day in court

Sat Apr 12 18:46:40 EDT 2008

Original Content at 
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__080412_imprisonedblack_pant.htm

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April 12, 2008

Imprisoned Black Panther Ed Poindexter was absent from his day in court

By Michael Richardson

Ed Poindexter missed his day in court.  Confined to a maximum 
security cell in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, the former Black 
Panther leader was absent from his day in court.  Poindexter's court 
date was scheduled in the austere but stately Supreme Court chambers 
on the second floor of the Nebraska State Capitol a few miles away 
from the prison where he is serving a life sentence.

Poindexter was convicted in April 1971, along with Mondo we Langa 
(formerly David Rice), for the 1970 bombing murder of Omaha police 
officer Larry Minard.  Officer Minard and the seven other police had 
been lured to a lethal trap by a bogus call about a woman screaming 
in a vacant building.  Instead of finding a crime victim, the police 
triggered a bomb-rigged suitcase killing Minard and injuring the others.

Sentenced to life imprisonment, Poindexter has not been eligible for 
parole and remains incarcerated 37 years after his conviction, along 
with Mondo we Langa who suffered a similar fate.  Poindexter earlier 
asked the Nebraska Board of Pardons to reduce his sentence to a 
number of years to make him eligible for parole.  Finding no support 
for his request, Poindexter filed a pro se appeal in Lancaster County 
District Court in 2006 seeking a determinate sentence.

Poindexter's legal pleading before the Nebraska Supreme Court argued 
that the merits of his claim should be heard in spite of the fact he 
is not a "skilled, school-trained attorney".  The Supreme Court has 
not had a prisoner personally appear before them for 30 years so 
Poindexter did not bother making a request to be present.  However, 
Poindexter did ask the court to consider his claim on the basis of 
written submissions.

Despite Poindexter's request for no oral argument, Assistant Attorney 
General Linda Willard was on hand to tell the state high court that 
there was no merit to Poindexter's appeal.  According to the Omaha 
World-Herald, Justice William Connolly asked if changes in parole 
rules could be retroactively imposed on prisoners.  Willard replied, 
"Things were done differently in those days."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation immediately assisted Omaha 
detectives investigating the bombing and worked the case 
closely.  However, the FBI was not there to solve the crime.  The FBI 
gave tainted help instead of a search for truth.  The Omaha FBI 
office had secret orders from Director J. Edgar Hoover to "disrupt" 
the Black Panthers under a covert and clandestine operation 
code-named COINTELPRO.  William Sullivan, Hoover's second in command, 
was the chief architect of COINTELPRO and funneled field reports to 
Hoover on a daily basis.  Sullivan would later admit to Congress that 
"no holds were barred" in the COINTELPRO operation.

Police identified a 15 year-old, Duane Peak, as the bomber.  Peak in 
turn implicated a 23 year-old Black Panther member, Raleigh House, as 
the supplier of the dynamite.  A copy of the fatal emergency call 
that lured Minard to his death was sent to FBI headquarters to 
analyze the middle-aged male voice on the tape in an attempt to 
identify the unknown caller.

However, J. Edgar Hoover was not interested in 15 year-old killers, 
Hoover wanted to put the Black Panthers out of business.  Peak was 
repeatedly interrogated over a series of days and eventually claimed 
that Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa, who were officers in Omaha's 
Black Panther chapter called the National Committee to Combat 
Fascism, were behind the deadly plot.

There were problems with Peak's confession and version of events that 
prosecutors took to the jury.  Deals were struck and decisions were 
made to tighten the noose around Poindexter and Langa.  As a result, 
Peak, who planted the bomb, received less than three years in 
juvenile detention and then walked free.  House, the supplier of the 
dynamite, served one night in jail and walked free.  The middle-aged 
unknown caller never was identified and has never been charged.

On October 13, 1970, a secret COINTELPRO memo from the Special 
Agent-in-Charge of the Omaha FBI office to J. Edgar Hoover in 
Washington, D.C. requested the voice analysis of the emergency call 
tape recording be stopped.  "Assistant COP GLENN GATES, Omaha PD, 
advised that he feels that any uses of this call might be prejudicial 
to the police murder trial against the two accomplices of PEAK and, 
therefore, has advised that he wishes no use of this tape until after 
the murder trials of Peak and the two accomplices has been completed."

Two Omaha detectives, Jack Swanson and Robert Pheffer, gave 
conflicting testimony over dynamite allegedly found in Langa's 
basement.  Pheffer would later contradict his own trial testimony and 
later embellished his story by claiming the discovery of wired 
suitcases never seen or reported by anyone else and not logged in any 
police report.

The jury that convicted Poindexter and Langa never heard the deadly 
tape.  The jury did not know that Peak would get a minimal sentence 
as a juvenile and that House would never be formally charged for 
supplying the dynamite.  The jury did not know the police testimony 
would later be self-contradicted.  The jury did not know about the 
COINTELPRO directives to destroy the Black Panthers and the 
compromised role of the FBI in the case.  The jury did not know about 
the deception of Assistant Chief of Police Glenn Gates concerning the 
emergency call tape recording.

Lincoln Attorney Robert Bartle has been waging a lengthy legal battle 
to bring the hidden facts of the case to the attention of the courts 
and is representing Poindexter in a second appeal also pending with 
the Nebraska Supreme Court.  No date has been set for a decision in 
either appeal.

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa remain incarcerated in the Nebraska 
State Penitentiary.  Both men deny any involvement in Larry Minard's death.
  Permission granted to reprint

Authors Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in 
Boston. Richardson writes about politics, election law, human 
nutrition, ethics, and music. Richardson is also a political 
consultant on ballot access.

Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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