The case against Randeep Mann is the result of a narrowly-focused investigation lacking evidence and built upon witnesses with implausible stories, defense attorney Blake Hendrix said during closing arguments Wednesday.
Mann is accused of plotting the Feb. 4, 2009 bombing attack in West Memphis that severely injured the chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board. Prosecutors said Mann planned the attack as the board investigated a new complaint against him that could have cost him his medical license.
But Hendrix said investigators incorrectly decided Mann was the likely bombing mastermind early on and then tried to prove it "to the exclusion" of other suspects, including additional doctors who had been disciplined by the board for serious issues. Mann had previously had his permit to prescribe controlled substances revoked amid complaints of over-prescribing painkillers.
"To say Dr. Mann had a unique motive is simply not true," Hendrix said. He later added that Mann losing his medical license wouldn't even be a major problem, since the Russellvile physician had significant investments in Memphis hotels and received disability payments totaling more than $18,000 a month. "If he lost his medical license, so what? He's still going to make a living."
Hendrix walked the jury through a number of witnesses in the case, suggesting many of them had something to gain or were not trustworthy.
The Missouri gun-maker whose testimony helped substantiate some of the charges against Mann was questionable because the man admitted numerous federal crimes and received immunity for his cooperation, Hendrix said. And the housekeeper who testified she saw an Indian-looking man outside the Pierce's home the night before the bombing was implausible because she didn't make that report until 6 months after the bombing, he said.
Prosecutors' version of events also has problems, Hendrix said. He suggested no one of Mann's intelligence would partially bury a canister of 40 mm grenades rather than cover them completely and that perhaps it was an attempt to frame Mann.
"The story is simply implausible," Hendrix said. "I guess it begs the question of this: whoever buried the 40mm grenades - I suggest to you they wanted them to be found."
No forensic evidence connected Mann to the bombing scene, Hendrix pointed out. He called the lack of evidence in the case "astounding" and questioned how the government could charge Mann with "aiding and abetting" the bomber without ever charging or definitively identifying the person who actually did it.
Hendrix said the case was entirely circumstantial and perhaps focused on Mann simply because he was "unpopular" in some circles.
"They picked the Indian guy with the guns," Hendrix said. "Otherwise, the proof simply lacks in this case."
PREVIOUSLY:
Dr. Randeep Mann is an obsessed "gun nut" who plotted a bombing of the chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board weeks after the body had initiated a new investigation that was threatening Mann's license to
practice, prosecutors said during closing arguments in Mann's trial in U.S. District Court Wednesday.
Mann, an avid collector and licensed dealer of firearms, had the knowledge and the weaponry to plan such an attack, Assistant U.S.
Attorney Karen Whatley said. And in past letters and hearings, Mann had singled out medical board chairman Dr. Trent Pierce, who sat in the first row of the courtroom and listened intently as Whatley
detailed the evidence in the case and described the Feb. 4, 2009, attack that nearly killed him.
"Trent Pierce told you it's by the grace of God he is here today," Whatley said, recalling his emotional testimony offered just before prosecutors rested their case. "And that is true. Because Randeep Mann wanted him dead."
Whatley walked jurors through many of the more than 70 witnesses and numerous pieces of evidence as she told them Mann is guilty of charges dealing with planning the bombing, owning illegal weapons and trying to obstruct the investigation.
She played phone recordings of Mann talking with his wife, Sangeeta Mann, after his initial arrest in March 2009. And she held up an inert grenade like the one believed to be used in the attack as well as a
grenade launcher seized from Mann's collection. Whatley repeatedly called Mann obsessed.
"They can cross the line," Whatley said of obsessed people, adding that is "exactly what happened in this case."
Sangeeta Mann is also facing obstruction charges and is being tried at the same time.
Whatley asked the jury to come back with guilty verdicts for both defendants, calling them the "only verdicts that are possible."
The defense is set to offer its closing arguments next.