- After a two week April 1971 trial and four days of deliberation,
an 11 white/one black member jury convicted Mondo we Langa (formerly David
Rice) and Edward Poindexter for the bombing murder of police officer Larry
Minard on August 17, 1970. Both men denied involvement, and ever since
consistently maintained their innocence, insisting they were framed. Supporters
agree, including Amnesty International that declared them political prisoners,
and no wonder.
-
- They were Omaha chapter National Committee to Combat
Fascism (NCCF) leaders, an off-shoot of the Black Panther Party, targeted
(as later revealed) by secret FBI/police Domino task force/COINTELPRO tactics,
following J. Edgar Hoover's orders to infiltrate, disrupt, sabotage, and
destroy their activism for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and real
economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.
-
- COINTELPRO is the acronym for the FBI's secretive/mostly
illegal counterintelligence program to neutralize political dissidents,
including communists; anti-war, human and civil rights activists; the American
Indian Movement; and Black Panther Party among others.
-
- In their book "Agents of Repression," Ward
Churchill and Jim Vander Wall wrote:
-
- "the term came to signify the whole context of clandestine
(typically illegal) political repression activities (including) a massive
surveillance (program via) wiretaps, surreptitious entries and burglaries,
electronic devices, live 'tails' and....bogus mail" to induce paranoia
and "foster 'splits' within or between organizations."
-
- Other tactics included:
-
- -- "black propaganda" through leaflets or other
publications "designed to discredit organizations and foster internal
tensions;"
-
- -- "disinformation or 'gray propaganda' " for
the same purpose;
-
- -- "bad-jacketing" to "creat(e) suspicion
- through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc. - that bona
fide organizational members, (usually leaders were) FBI/police informants,"
to turn some against others violently;
-
- -- "assassinations (of) selected political leaders,"
including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969 by Chicago police
while they slept; and
-
- -- "harassment arrests (on bogus) charges."
-
- Individuals and organizations were targeted for their
activism, not crimes that were blamed on innocent victims like the "Omaha
Two."
-
- In November 1968, a J. Edgar Hoover memorandum ordered
his agents "to exploit all avenues of creating....dissension within
the ranks of the BPP (using) imaginative hard-hitting counterintelligence
measures aimed at crippling the BPP." From 1968 - 1971, they were
vicious, including against Mondo we Langa and Edward Poindexter, targeted
by the Bureau to be neutralized.
-
- Months before they were arrested, FBI agents and Omaha
police harassed them with tactics like frequent traffic stops, verbal abuse,
and more. We Langa was called before a grand jury, and the Greater Omaha
Community Action Agency fired him. Poindexter was victimized by bogus newspaper
letters and an anonymous phone campaign. For the two men, it was just the
beginning of a long nightmare, ongoing after 40 years.
-
- Background on the "Omaha Two"
-
- We Langa joined the BPP in 1969, then later the NCCF.
He wrote for the local underground paper, Buffalo Chip, and in prison created
art, wrote plays, short stories, articles, and five poetry books. He also
contributed poems and stories to literary journals and magazines, including
The Black Scholar, ARGO, Black American Literary Forum, Pacifica Review,
Black Books Bulletin, and many others.
-
- He's one of several co-authors of "The Race: Matters
Concerning Pan Afrikan History, Culture, and Genocide" published in
1992, and a contributor to Nebraska Voices, commissioned by the Nebraska
Humanities Council in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Nebraska's
statehood.
-
- Like Poindexter, he's been incarcerated for nearly 40
years, during which time he's been non-violent and mentored young inmates
as a model prisoner. Yet he's bogusly called a "cop killer,"
repeatedly (with Poindexter) denied parole, and in June 1968, the Nebraska
Supreme Court ruled them ineligible unless the Board of Pardons commutes
their sentences - unlikely as it's composed of the governor, attorney general
and secretary of state who haven't commuted a first-degree murder conviction
in two decades, and overruled numerous Nebraska Parole Board's post-1993
unanimous decisions to commute their sentences to time served.
-
- Edward Poindexter is a Vietnam veteran, a graduate of
Metro State University, St. Paul, MN with a straight A average, and earned
an MA from Goddard Graduate Program in Montpelier, VT. He was imprisoned
in Minnesota to separate him from we Langa.
-
- He's held leadership positions in the Art Club, Jaycees
as president, and Harambee African Cultural Organization. He also:
-
- -- received the Insight Program's Antoniak Award for
outstanding achievement;
-
- -- created the musical drama, Shakedown Blues;
-
- -- published two Youth Survival Guides booklets for troubled
youths;
-
- -- recorded Jammer from the Slammer promoting constructive
problem-solving and self-motivation;
-
- -- participated in Minnesota's Turn Off the Violence
Campaign;
-
- -- was involved in the Juvenile Detention Bed Hotline
Information Message Program producing works to support non-violence;
-
- -- teaches and is currently writing a workbook for a
Minnesota Correctional System class on building self-esteem;
-
- -- teaches a health class including AIDS education;
-
- -- is involved in teaching other classes on the history
of intolerance in America, the civil rights movement, black history, and
music;
-
- -- developed a program for prisoners to encourage attitudinal
and behavioral changes for men who batter women;
-
- -- produced motivational tapes; and
-
- -- proposed an audio recording studio, currently operating.
-
- He's also been a model prisoner, yet he's denied parole.
-
- Background on the Case
-
- At trial, jurors were told that, using dynamite, blasting
caps, and a battery, Poindexter made a suitcase bomb in we Langa's kitchen.
A week later, he allegedly instructed 15-year old Duane Peak to put it
in a vacant house, call the police, and say a woman was dragged into it
screaming. Peak was charged with the crime, confessed, and claimed we Langa
and Poindexter put him up to it, but changed his story numerous times,
only once incriminated the "Omaha Two," was sentenced as a juvenile,
and served about five years.
-
- Initially, he didn't implicate them. In fact, he was
in custody three days before mentioning their names, clearly under pressure,
threats, and believed beatings in return for leniency.
-
- The defense never heard his taped 911 call. It wasn't
introduced at trial, and the original tape was destroyed. Years later,
a copy surfaced with an accompanying FBI memo suggesting it was withheld
because the voice wasn't Peak's, so perhaps authorities were shielding
whoever made it, someone complicit in the crime to incriminate we Langa
and Poindexter.
-
- A week after the bombing, police targeted the black community,
conducted warrantless searches, arrested NCCF members, had no evidence
to hold them, so invented it by apparently planting dynamite, other explosives,
blasting caps, and weapons in we Langa's basement, then discovered them
when he was in Kansas City for a speech, prepared a shoddy report, gave
perjured trial testimony contradicting it, yet got the two men convicted
for a crime they didn't commit.
-
- Years later, one juror admitted believing they were innocent
because only circumstantial evidence was introduced, and Duane Peak's testimony
wasn't credible. Another juror said the only black one thought they were
innocent, yet relented after the others agreed to no death penalty.
-
- Judicial Hypocrisy
-
- The entire process was controversial and tainted, including
circumstantial evidence that never should have been allowed pertaining
to the defendants' political beliefs, ones held by millions in the country,
then and now.
-
- In addition, their fingerprints weren't on the alleged
dynamite, skin tests performed to detect traces were negative, and according
to former Omaha police officer, Marvin McClarty, an improper search procedure
found it. Then shortly after the mens' conviction, we Langa's house mysteriously
burned down, eliminating any chance for a post hoc accuracy check of police
testimony.
-
- In addition, in 1974, a federal court ruled the search
illegal, cited inconsistencies in a police lieutenant's testimony authorizing
it, admitted the dynamite might have been planted, and ordered a new trial,
upheld by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1975.
-
- However, in 1976, the Supreme Court applied a post hoc
jurisdictional technicality to deny it by ruling that when states provide
full and fair Fourth Amendment litigation opportunities (a dubious conclusion
in this case), the Constitution warrants no habeas relief. Later rulings
blocked the appellate process, and the statutory time limit for filing
in Nebraska courts expired while the men awaited the federal outcome.
-
- A major obstacle is that the Court of Appeals won't address
whether the men were fairly tried, whether tainted evidence was introduced,
whether key witnesses committed perjury, only if under legal system standards
the process was fair, true or not.
-
- Most important, the likelihood that political targets
can get due process and judicial fairness is nil when authorities want
to convict and have complicit judges allowing it. The courts today are
corrupted with them, hanging ones of the worst kind, so what chance have
two black men under a system structured against them and always has been.
-
- On June 19, 2009, the Nebraska Supreme Court showed it
by denying Poindexter a new trial despite overwhelming evidence of his
innocence as well as we Langa's - with added closing statement emphasis
saying:
-
- "We affirm the judgment of the district court denying
Poindexter's motion for postconviction relief," meaning that to be
Black in America grants you none.
-
- In the 1980s, Nebraska Chief Supreme Court Justice Norman
Krivosha commissioned a study of the state's judicial fairness that concluded
it was equitable with one exception - race. People of color were more likely
to be arrested, indicted, convicted, and given longer sentences than whites,
including the death penalty for capital offenses. It's no surprise that
Nebraska's 3% black population comprises over 40% of its inmates, and the
same disparity holds nationally.
-
- Blacks make up around 12.4% of the population, but almost
half of those incarcerated. Around 50% of them are for non-violent offenses,
and about half of those are drug related. In 2000, Human Rights Watch reported
that in one-third of the states, 75% of all drug related offenders were
black. In Illinois, it was 89%. Shockingly, with less than 5% of the world's
population, America has almost one-fouth of its prisoners, by far the largest
total at around 2.4 million, growing at about 1,000 per week, mostly affecting
blacks and hispanics.
-
- It's no wonder that we Langa and Poindexter couldn't
reopen their case despite later FBI documents (released in 1978) showing
police and the Bureau collaborated to suppress exculpatory evidence to
convict two innocent men. Jack Swanson, the chief detective in charge of
the investigation, told the BBC why:
-
- "I think we did the right thing at the time because
the Black Panther Party....completely disappeared from Omaha after we got
the two main players." In other words, neutralize the leadership and
the organization dies.
-
- Yet former Nebraska Governor Frank Morrison (1961 - 1967,
who with Thomas Kenney represented Poindexter as a public defender) believed
the men:
-
- -- "were convicted for their rhetoric, not for any
crime they committed....The only thing these fellas did was try to combat
all the racial discrimination of the time the wrong way....They weren't
convicted of murder."
-
- It was for their activism and prominence to stifle dissent,
keep them imprisoned to assure it, and continue a long tradition of defiling
due process and judicial fairness for people of color, the poor, and disadvantaged
in a democracy for the privileged alone, as virulent under Obama as earlier.
-
- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
<mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net>lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday
at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
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