[Ppnews] Omaha 2 - Justice is Missing

Political Prisoner News ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jun 30 10:13:08 EDT 2009


JournalStar.com


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http://journalstar.com/articles/2009/06/28/opinion/columns/doc4a47e7a34afbf318552393.txt

Local View: Heart of justice is missing

By NAN GRAF
Sunday, Jun 28, 2009 - 11:55:28 pm CDT

A recent Nebraska Supreme Court decision denied former Omaha Black 
Panther leader Ed Poindexter the right to a new trial (June 19) and 
ignored violations of his rights that were often recorded in memos by 
longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his agents or by Omaha 
Police Department reports. Of course, these recorded materials served 
as tips to investigate before Poindexter's legal team handed over 
volumes of documentation to the court.

Poindexter's arrest in August of 1970 for the suspected murder of an 
Omaha policeman, Officer Larry Minard Sr., and his short 1971 trial, 
along with fellow Panther leader Mondo we Langa (formerly David 
Rice), made front-page headlines in Omaha from the time of their 
arrest to their conviction. In fact, activists and journalists who 
have studied this ongoing injustice claim the two men were convicted 
by headline.

In April 1971, Poindexter and we Langa were convicted of first-degree 
murder and sentenced to life in prison. Now men in their 60s, they're 
still at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, partly because they refuse 
to say they're sorry for a crime they didn't commit and thus don't 
qualify for commutation or parole. They've always maintained their 
innocence, but learned early on that innocence isn't enough.

Support of their cause to win justice has come from Amnesty 
International in the United States and in Europe. On April 18, 1999, 
Amnesty International at a General Meeting in Minneapolis passed a 
resolution calling for the immediate release of Ed Poindexter, Mondo 
we Langa and other political prisoners.

I've followed this case since 1970 and have researched and written 
articles about it since 1974. In the summer of 1981, I took an 
eight-week graduate seminar on human rights and discrimination in the 
political science department at the University of Iowa. My project 
for the summer was to study the topic of political prisoners in the 
United States.

For my 35-page seminary paper, I focused on three incarcerated black 
leaders known worldwide (if not here in Lincoln) as political 
prisoners: Ed Poindexter, Geronimo Pratt (of California) and Mondo we 
Langa. At the time, I had access to 350 pages of FBI COINTELPRO 
memos, released through the Freedom of Information Act, that 
demonstrated how FBI Director Hoover orchestrated urban police 
departments into action against blacks.

In a memo dated Aug. 26, 1967, Hoover urged FBI agents to "discredit" 
black leaders and their groups. Memos dated March 17, 1970, and Aug. 
24, 1970, specifically targeted Poindexter and we Langa by way of 
discrediting and disinformation (Hoover's coinage for plain old 
lying) in an effort to dismantle their leadership. In the 1990s, the 
British Broadcasting Company produced a documentary on Ed Poindexter, 
Geronimo Pratt and Mondo we Langa that is available on DVD.

When I, as a lay person (not a lawyer), first read the Nebraska 
Supreme Court's 22-page printed response to Ed Poindexter's October 
2008 filing, it seemed to me a superficial treatment of serious 
issues that would result in preserving the status quo rather than 
correcting injustices.

I realize that both British and American law is built on precedent, 
that is, on cases that precede a current case. So there is limited 
opportunity for progressive thought or change. This partially 
explains why our legal culture took so long to grow away from the 
infamous 1857 Dred Scott case that essentially meant blacks have no 
rights whites need to respect. (Privileged racists in control of 
judicial and legislative branches explain the rest of what happened.)

With this recent Nebraska ruling, it's as if the court cast blind 
eyes upon the failures of Poindexter's early defense attorneys and 
upon the misconduct of prosecuting attorneys. In addition, the court 
abandoned consideration of injustices against Poindexter inherent in 
the FBI's 911 memo (dated Oct. 13, 1970). Omaha's Assistant Chief of 
Police, Glenn Gates, in this memo advises withholding evidence until 
after Poindexter's April 1971 trial, evidence the police figured 
might help the defendant. The 911 memo offers all kinds of 
possibilities to explore, both subtle and overt.

Credibility of the state's witness? It mattered not. Lying under 
oath? Conflicting testimonies? These moral questions fester like open wounds.

The court's recurrent refrain of agreement with shallow district 
court opinions predictably leads into this conclusion on the last 
page of the printed text: "We affirm the judgment of the district 
court denying Poindexter's motion for postconviction relief."

What I brought back home with me to Lincoln after the 1981 seminar on 
human rights and discrimination at the University of Iowa is that 
political prisoners seldom get justice in their own backyards. Nearly 
every nation in the world incarcerates political prisoners. It's a 
universal problem that could be solved, though, by courts throughout the world.

It is especially disappointing that only the veneer of justice and 
not the heart of it emerges now from the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Nan Graf is a retired professor living in Lincoln.



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