LITTLE ROCK — Closing arguments are scheduled for 10 a.m. today in the federal trial of Randeep Mann, a Russellville doctor accused of engineering a 2009 bombing that injured the Arkansas State Medical Board chairman, and of Mann’s wife, Sangeeta, accused of interfering with the investigation.
Defense attorneys rested their cases Tuesday afternoon without calling either of the Manns to testify.
Earlier in the day, defense attorneys called four witnesses and read aloud two stipulations to supplement the testimony of six other defense witnesses on Friday and Monday. Prosecutors had earlier called about 70 witnesses over 11 days of testimony.
Two defense witnesses were prosecution witnesses recalled to the stand. One of them, Agent John Norris of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, listened Tuesday to a longer version of a tape recorded telephone call that jurors had already heard during the government’s case. Randeep Mann made the call to his wife while he was in jail.
Special section
During the conversation, Mann directed his wife to “dispose of everything,”which the government interpreted as a directive to destroy evidence.
In the extended version of the call, Randeep Mann can also be heard telling his wife to call a man in Oklahoma City to sell him one of Mann’s boats, to have a BMW of Mann’s fixed and sold and to list his motorcycles for sale on e-bay.
When Sangeeta Mann asked why, Randeep Mann responded, “I’m not coming home.”
“Don’t say that!” she replied.
He then told her that they needed to “sell the house - everything.”
Defense attorney Blake Hendrix asked Norris, the case agent, if perhaps Mann was really talking about disposing of assets to raise money for his defense.
“I’m not sure,” Norris replied, saying it sounded to him like the conversation had moved away from a discussion about assets by the time Mann advised his wife to “dispose of everything.”
Also Tuesday, Wayne Henry, the owner of a construction company who did a lot of work at the Manns’ London home over the years, looked at a photograph of 40mm grenades that were found buried near the Mann home a month after the bombing, and said he had never seen anything like them inside the house.
Shown an inert MK3A2 hand-held concussion grenade that has been in the courtroom and that investigators believe is the same type of grenade used in the Feb. 4, 2009, bombing in West Memphis that severely injured Dr. Trent Pierce, Henry also said he had never seen anything like that in the Mann house.
Earlier in the trial, Jeff Kimbrough of River Valley Alarm Co. in Russellville testified that he had been in the Mann house several times over the years to install and service an alarm system and that he had seen something that looked like “a real fat bullet” with a gold top. Prosecutors showed him the photograph of the unearthed 40mm grenades, and he said the item he saw looked like those in the picture.
Kimbrough also was shown the inert concussion grenade in the courtroom, which has a black fiber body, and said he had seen something similar to it in the Mann home. He specifically remembered seeing the ring on the device’s top, which experts testified is used to pull the pin and activate a live version of the grenade, and the “spoon,” or lever along the object’s side.
A government witness, retired firearms dealer Lloyd Hahn of St. Charles, Mo., testified during the prosecution’s case that he had sold eight black fiber-bodied concussion grenades to Mann in the late 1990s. He said he had bought them from a vendor at a large Louisville, Ky., gun show where both legal and illegal devices were sold.
Hahn testified that when he bought the grenades, the detonators were pulled out and lying next to the bodies. To restore the devices to live grenades that could be detonated by removing the pin, he said, “All I had to do was screw the detonators in, and they were complete.”
Defense attorneys then tried to get Hahn to say that the grenades he sold Mann were “flash-bang” grenades that are designed to flash a bright light to disorient people but are otherwise harmless. But Hahn said the concussion grenades he sold Mann were designed to knock people off their feet.
A London city worker testified during the prosecution’s case about stumbling upon a partially buried ammunition tin filled with 98 live launcher-propelled 40mm grenades as he looked for a private place to urinate in a clearing near the Manns’ home. The clearing was up a small hill off a cul-de-sac on Galaxy Lane, which runs into Milky Way Lane, where the Mann house sits.
Mark Rinke, the Water Department employee who testified that his foot bumped up against the lid of the grenade canister that was sticking out of the ground, told jurors that he was in the area checking for leaks in waterlines. He said someone had called him about a possible problem with a swimming pool on Galaxy Lane.
On Tuesday, a neighbor of Mann’s who lives in the only house on Galaxy Lane testified that her pool was installed in January and February of 2009. She said installers cut a waterline in January while digging a hole for the pool. However, homeowner Lynn Marie Blunier insisted that the problem was resolved right away by the swimming pool company and that the city was never involved, although she acknowledged calling the city to find the location of the shut-off valve.
Blunier said she was home all day on March 3, 2009, the day Rinke said he stumbled upon the buried canister, and she never saw city workers or anyone inspecting her pool that day.
In a stipulation before resting their case, defense attorneys told jurors that Mann receives, and will continue to receive, about $18,000 a month from a disability insurance policy. The stipulation was an apparent explanation of financial documents introduced earlier by prosecutors to show that the Manns made large cash withdrawals and deposits before and after the bombing.
At the time, defense attorneys pointed out that the activity wasn’t unusual for the Mann household.
Also called as a witness Tuesday was Eric John Hartsell, the co-owner of a Russellville body shop, who testified that a tire found in a shower at the Manns’ home by investigators was from a car belonging to the Mann household that had a water leak. The prosecution had tried to raise suspicions about the tire because a spare tire was used in the bombing.
The trial in U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller’s courtroom began July 6.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/04/2010