LITTLE ROCK — With her husband facing as much as $1.7 million in court-ordered restitution, the wife of the Pope County doctor who orchestrated the bombing that maimed the head of the Arkansas State Medical Board wants to have their marital property divided in a divorce action.
After standing by her man throughout two years of legal proceedings, which included her own conviction for trying to stymie the investigation into Dr. Randeep Singh Mann’s wrongdoing, 49-year-old Sangeeta “Sue” Mann sued for divorce Tuesday after 27 years of marriage, seeking spousal support as well as the property split.
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The filing comes a month and a day after she was fined $50,000 and sentenced to a year in prison for obstructing a federal investigation into her husband’s possession of grenades and involvement in the February 2009 bombing of Medical Board Chairman Trent Pierce. Sentenced the same day, 52-year-old Randeep Mann got life in prison with a $100,000 fine.
Randeep Mann alone was ordered to pay restitution to Pierce - an amount not yet determined by the court but which prosecutors say is $1.7 million. Pierce lost an eye and was deafened in an ear in the blast in front of his West Memphis home. The explosion also destroyed his sense of smell, broke his right arm and right knee, blew flesh off his right forearm and out of his left thigh, and embedded shrapnel in his abdomen, forcing him to have part of his small intestine removed. He spent six months recovering before feeling well enough to return to his Medical Board duties.
Randeep Mann has maintained his innocence, but prosecutors say he had the bomb placed outside Pierce’s home out of anger over Pierce’s efforts to strip him of his medical license.
Sue Mann is free while her case is on appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis. Her husband has also appealed.
Her divorce attorney, Jack Wagoner III, did not respond to an e-mail questioning the motivation for the divorce, which he described to The Associated Press as a “no fault” action. Randeep Mann’s criminal attorneys declined to comment.
No hearing has been scheduled in the federal proceedings to address restitution, and no documents related to the matter have been publicly disclosed since the Manns’ Feb. 28 sentencing. The judge gave the parties 90 days to resolve the issue.
Sue Mann’s two-page petition before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mary McGowan is unremarkable among similar filings. It cites the couple’s two-year separation as grounds for divorce, citing his March 4, 2009, arrest date as the beginning of their separation. He has been in custody since.
Arkansas Code Annotated 9-12-301, which lists grounds for divorce under the Family Law statute, requires a judge to grant a divorce when a couple has not lived together for at least 18 months. Another option under the law would have allowed Sue Mann a divorce because her husband has been convicted of a felony or “infamous” crime.
The petition asks the judge to equally divide the couple’s property and debts, if they can’t work out an amicable agreement, and require that Randeep Mann pay his wife’s attorneys fees. Children are not an issue because the couple’s children are adults. A restraining order bars either Mann from selling, mortgaging or disposing of any property, and requires each of them to complete an affidavit describing their financial means ahead of any hearing or trial.
At Sue Mann’s sentencing, her criminal attorney Jeff Rosenzweig invoked the couple’s long marriage in a plea for probation.
“What we’re dealing with here is a woman who was married to Dr. Mann for decades,” Rosenzweig said. “At his request, she moved records from Point A to Point B, and that’s basically it.”
He asked the judge to “recognize the stresses and strains when a lifetime partner has been arrested and asks her to help,” saying that breaking the law was inconsistent with her character.
Sue Mann was convicted of obstructing an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting the tampering of evidence, both related to moving documents out of her husband’s medical clinic at his request, after he was jailed, to keep investigators from finding them. The documents turned out to be irrelevant to the case.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/01/2011