Mann lawyer asking judge for new trial

Wife convicted on 2 counts

 Sangeeta "Sue" Mann, walks to the Federal Courthouse in Little Rock, Ark., before a jury Monday.
Sangeeta "Sue" Mann, walks to the Federal Courthouse in Little Rock, Ark., before a jury Monday.

— An attorney for Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, the wife of an Arkansas doctor convicted Aug. 9 in a bombing that injured the chairman of the state Medical Board, asked a judge Monday to throw out her two related convictions or grant her a new trial.

Sue Mann, 49, was convicted alongside her husband, Randeep Mann, of conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding and concealing documents from use in an official proceeding.

Both charges pertained to powers of attorney and pre-signed blank checks that Sue Mann removed from her husband’s medical clinic in Russellville, at his request, after he was arrested but before an expected search warrant was executed there.

The documents concerned what the Manns considered personal matters - a bank account for Randeep Mann’s brother, Sandip, who was deported to India in 2002 after his visa expired, and documents relating to his son, whom his brother and sister-in-law adopted after his deportation.

Dr. Randeep Mann has been convicted of plotting a bombing attack that nearly killed the chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board.

Mann guilty of bombing attack

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Sue Mann later turned the documents over to prosecutors, who said they weren’t relevant to the bombing investigation, but showed that the Manns were trying to stay a step ahead of investigators and a federal grand jury.

In addition to the two charges related to the documents, Randeep Mann was convicted of aiding and abetting the use of a weapon of mass destruction, aiding and abetting the damage or destruction of a vehicle by means of an explosive, illegally possessing 98 live grenades and illegally possessing a machine gun.

The first two charges, for which he faces up to life in prison, concerned an explosion in West Memphis on the morning of Feb. 4, 2009, that partially blinded and otherwise severely injured Dr. Trent Pierce, then 54. Pierce chaired the medical board that had disciplined Mann previously and was initiating a new investigation that had the potential to permanently revoke his medical license.

The latter two charges involved weapons found in a field near the Manns’ home in the Pope County town of London and inside the house. Randeep Mann, 52, a licensed federal firearms dealer, wasn’t charged with possessing more than100 other guns found in his home.

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Doctor bombing

In documents filed Monday, attorney Tim Dudley of Little Rock said that the two charges for which Sue Mann was convicted are related, and must be analyzed together.

He argued that the conduct necessary to prove that the Manns intended to obstruct a judicial or grand jury proceeding must be the kind of conduct that, “in the defendant’s mind, has the natural and probable cause of obstructing or interfering.”

“In this case,” he said, “there was no evidence presented that the defendants knew that the documents removed from the office would ever be sought by the grand jury. ... The evidence might prove an intent to conceal the documents from investigators executing the search warrant. But, that evidence did not and could not prove an intent to conceal the documents from the grand jury.”

Dudley also argued that the government was required to prove, but didn’t, that the Manns’ conduct had the “natural and probable effect” of interfering with the grand jury proceedings.

“The government never presented proof that, had the documents been found during the search of the clinic, the grand jury investigation would have been different,” he said.

The motion is pending before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller, who presided over the five-week jury trial. No sentencing date has been set for either of the Manns.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 08/24/2010

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