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<font size=3><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Original Content at
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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Framed-by-the-FBI--A-doze-by-Michael-Richardson-090304-194.html<br>
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<b>March 4, 2009<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=4>Framed by the FBI: A dozen reasons the
'Omaha Two' deserve a new trial (3 of 6)<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2><i>By Michael Richardson<br><br>
</i>
<img src="http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/larryminard-20080630-213.jpg" width=80 height=96 alt="[]">
</i><b> <br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>New Trial Reason Five: Raleigh House, the dynamite supplier who
walked free <br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
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 <i>Omaha World-Herald</i>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<b> <br><br>
New Trial Reason Six: The unknown dynamite arrests of three
men--cases dismissed <br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
News of the arrest was withheld from the public by cooperative
reporters. The <i>Omaha World-Herald</i> had regular access to the
fourth floor squadroom at police headquarters where the arrest logs were
daily made available to crime beat reporters. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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." <br><br>
"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." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br>
*** <br><br>
<i>Permission to reprint granted</i> <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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