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<font size=3><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Original Content at
<a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__080412_imprisonedblack_pant.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__080412_imprisonedblack_pant.htm<br>
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<b>April 12, 2008<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=4>Imprisoned Black Panther Ed Poindexter
was absent from his day in court<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2><i>By Michael Richardson<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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. <br><br>
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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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 <i>pro se </i>appeal in Lancaster County District Court in 2006
seeking a determinate sentence.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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 <i>Omaha World-Herald,</i>
Justice William Connolly asked if changes in parole rules could be
retroactively imposed on prisoners. Willard replied, "Things
were done differently in those days."<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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. <br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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."<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>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.<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Ed Poindexter and Mondo
we Langa remain incarcerated in the Nebraska State Penitentiary.
Both men deny any involvement in Larry Minard's death.<br>
<i>Permission granted to reprint</i> <br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>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. <br><br>
<br><br>
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