LITTLE ROCK — Jurors in the federal trial of Dr. Randeep Mann and his wife, Sangeeta Mann, are scheduled to return to the federal courts building in Little Rock on Monday, after a second full day of deliberations Friday failed to yield a verdict.
Mann, a Russellville physician who lives in London, is accused of engineering a Feb. 4, 2009, bombing that partially blinded and severely injured Dr. Trent Pierce,chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board.
Prosecutors said Mann arranged for a grenade rigged tire to be left in Pierce’s West Memphis driveway in retaliation for the board’s repeated refusal to reinstate his prescription-writing privileges. The board revoked Mann’s Drug Enforcement Administration permit in 2006, for a second time, in response to complaints that some of his patients had died of overdoses.
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Pierce testified that he shook his finger at Mann during a board hearing and made it clear that he didn’t think the permit should ever be reinstated.
Sangeeta Mann, 49, is accused of helping her husband, now 52, hide documents from investigators. She also is accused of lying to a federal grand jury about the reason she took some documents out of her husband’s clinic before a search warrant was executed there.
Defense attorneys said prosecutors unfairly targeted Mann, who is a native of India, because of prejudice against him in the community. They said prosecutors presented no evidence to tie Mann to the bombing, and that his wife was merely acting responsibly in removing pre-signed blank checks from an empty clinic as a security precaution.
The trial before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller began July 6.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 08/07/2010