David Rice (also known as Mondo we Langa; 1947 – March 11, 2016) and Edward Poindexter (November 1, 1944 - December 7, 2023) were African-American activists convicted of the murder of Omaha Police Officer Larry Minard. Minard died when a suitcase bomb containing dynamite exploded in a North Omaha home on August 17, 1970. Officer John Tess was also injured in the explosion. Poindexter and Rice had been members of the Black Panther Party.
Their case was, and continues to be, controversial. The Omaha Police recommended withholding exculpatory evidence, a tape of a 911 call, from being played at the trial. The two men had been targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), which operated against and infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups, including the Omaha Black Panthers.Jones, Charles E. The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered). Black Classic Press (1988) p 426-427 Amnesty International has been following the case and in 1999 recommended a retrial or release for Rice and Poindexter.AIUSA asked the London International Secretariate in 1999 to adopt the two as political prisoners, but this hasn't been done. The state's parole board recommended the men for release, but political leaders did not act on these recommendations.
Rice and Poindexter
David Rice was born in Omaha on May 21, 1947, graduated from Creighton Preparatory School and took courses at Creighton University. Both are Catholic institutions of learning. He wrote for the local underground paper, Buffalo Chip, from 1969 to 1970 and was a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He played guitar at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, a center of progressive activism in the 1960s and 1970s under the pastorate of Fr. John McCaslin. Rice also ran a breakfast program for inner-city youth and was a well-known community activist. At the time of his death on March 12, 2016, David Rice/Mondo we Langa was a published poet and playwright. Even writing from prison, he had become a major voice for justice and the arts in Nebraska.
Ed Poindexter was born in Omaha in 1944. He was a Vietnam War veteran, and was honorably discharged. Like Rice, Poindexter was a community activist in North Omaha and was elected to the Douglas County Democratic Convention in 1970. During his incarceration in he earned an associate's degree through Southeast Community College, and in 1979 he was transferred to prison in Minnesota to earn a bachelor's degree in human services from Metro State University in St. Paul. He also completed master's degree coursework in industrial systems through Goddard Graduate School in Montpellier, Vermont. In Minnesota he taught self-improvement groups for youths in the prison, ran a juvenile detention hotline, and worked in the prison audio-visual department. Poindexter produced rap songs under the name, "Jammer from the Slammer," and was active in Toastmasters International. He transferred back to Nebraska's prison system in 2006.
Context of the events in the summer of 1970 In the wake of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., racial tensions in cities across America were high. In March 1968, riots in Omaha led to the shooting of a local high school student during an event in support of segregationist George Wallace's presidential campaign. In the summer of 1970, there was a rash of bombings in the Midwest. Five bombings had occurred in neighboring Iowa, explosions occurred in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and both a police precinct and the Component Concept Corporation suffered bomb damage in Omaha. Members associated with the Black Panther Party were the prime suspects in these bombings. The national BPP had revoked the Omaha chapter for inactivity, so at the time of the August 17, 1970, bombing, Rice and Poindexter were officers of an organization called the National Committee to Combat Fascism.
In July, a warrant was issued to the ATF to search NCCF headquarters for 60 machine guns and 180 sticks of dynamite. The warrant was based on information provided to agent Thomas Sledge by a 12-year-old girl, Marialice Clark, who was the sister of Linda Clark, a girlfriend of Ed Poindexter. Sledge spelled Clark's name incorrectly in his affidavit as Mary Ellis Clark. Sledge claimed that Clark watched five men make a bomb out of dynamite, including Frank and Will Peak, two cousins of Duane Peak, a 16-year-old who would be the state's main witness against Rice and Poindexter. The affidavit claimed the men planted the bomb at Components Concepts Corporation, took a photograph of it there, and came back to NCCF headquarters and showed the photograph to Marialice Clark. The Omaha FBI called the Justice Department in Washington because they had an informant in the NCCF chapter and knew there were no machine guns or dynamite located there. The Justice Department ordered the US Attorney in Omaha, J. William Gallup, to rescind the warrant and cancel the raid. An attorney in the criminal division of the DOJ told him that due to the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago in December, 1969, the DOJ wanted no more raids on Black Panther houses.
August 17 At 2 a.m., a call was made to the Omaha police 911 operator reporting a woman dragged screaming into a vacant house at 2867 Ohio Street. Patrolman James Sledge and his partner Michael Lamson were assigned to the call. (Sledge was the younger brother of ATF agent Thomas Sledge, who himself had been an Omaha Police officer.) Two other cruisers volunteered to go on the call including Larry Minard, John Tess and Paul Rust. A total of four cars carrying eight police officers arrived at 2867 Ohio Street. No neighbors corroborated the information that a woman had been dragged screaming into the vacant house. The caller had given a boarded up house as his address. The police officers noticed a suitcase on its side lying halfway inside and halfway outside the doorway. Five officers stepped over the suitcase and entered the house. Larry Minard tripped over the suitcase as he left 2867 Ohio. The resultant explosion killed him and seriously injured Tess.
Duane Peak After hiding out for nearly a week, Duane Peak was arrested for the crime on August 28. In his first statement to police, without having consulted an attorney, Peak said that there was an envelope for him at NCCF headquarters on Sunday, August 16. Inside, a note told him to go in back of the Lothrop Drug store and pick up a suitcase, which he did before 5 p.m. He was instructed to take the suitcase to an address near 28th and Ohio at 11 p.m. that night and leave it on the field side of a fence. The note told him to go to a particular payphone before 2 a.m. and wait for a phone call. The phone rang and a woman's voice told him to call 911 and report a woman dragged into 2867 Ohio. The police report indicates that he admitted to placing the 911 call. Peak implicated neither Rice nor Poindexter in his first statement. There are no police reports for August 29 or August 30, so it is unknown who talked to him over the weekend, though in his February 4, 1971, deposition, Peak said that Lt. James Perry interrogated him several times over that weekend. On Monday, August 31, Peak told the County Attorney Art O'Leary in a deposition, that Poindexter had made the bomb at Rice's house, told him to plant it, and then lure the police to the vacant house with an anonymous 911 call. (Peak allegedly carried a suitcase bomb with a clothespin triggering device into three vehicles and to two different residences from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. that day, at one point putting it in the trunk of a car because there were seven passengers in the car including his two small nieces.) ATF Agent Tom Sledge, brother of the Omaha police officer assigned to the call, was present during Peak's deposition, as were two Omaha Police officers, Bill Coleman and Pitmon Foxall and Peak's attorney, Tom Carey, although Peak had to ask the County Attorney who Carey was.
In this deposition, Peak told the County Attorney that he wanted to "get out of this whole thing." He cannot remember details of his story, such as the name of a woman who drove him from NCCF headquarters to David Rice's house to pick up the suitcase bomb. The County Attorney provided him Norma Aufrecht's name. Peak repeatedly said that Edward Poindexter got a box of dynamite and a suitcase out of David Rice's basement. At the trial, he would change his testimony to implicate another NCCF member, when his new testimony was that Raleigh House drove Duane with a suitcase full of dynamite to David Rice's house, Edward Poindexter took three sticks to make the bomb and put the remaining sticks in a box, which he took into the basement. Peak also claimed that he put the suitcase in the middle of the room standing up, and that someone else must have laid it down in the doorway and armed it to explode. He refused to say that he attached the bomb to the floor, which annoyed Art O'Leary who told him on page 25, "As a practical matter, it doesn't make any difference what the truth is concerning you at all." At other points in the deposition, Peak said that police officers told him Panthers were coming from out of town to eliminate him. He specifically said that Foxall told him he was the last person seen carrying a suitcase at 28th and Ohio that night.
In an interview with the Washington Post on January 8, 1978, County Prosecutor Art O'Leary admitted that he had made a deal with Duane Peak to prosecute him as a juvenile in return for his testimony. O'Leary acknowledged that without Peak's testimony, the pair would not have been convicted.
Preliminary hearing
At a preliminary hearing on September 28, Peak took the stand and recanted his story, testifying instead that neither Poindexter nor Rice were involved. After a recess, Peak implicated Poindexter and Rice. Peak was at that time wearing dark glasses, which he removed at the request of Rice's attorney, David Herzog. Peak appeared to those present to have been beaten. Herzog asked Peak if he had been threatened during the recess, and if he had discussed his confession to help him remember it. Peak replied in the affirmative to both questions, telling the court that his lawyer was not present when he discussed his confession with county attorney O'Leary.Taken from a letter to the court in support of the parole of David Rice by Former Nebraska Gov. Frank Morrison Sr. who was trial attorney for Poindexter, reported in Schmitz, Rae Ann. "More Facts on the We Langa Case". Omaha World-Herald, December 22, 1994.
April 1971 trial
Poindexter and Rice were tried in Douglas County District Court by a jury consisting of eleven white jurors and one black juror. Deliberations lasted four days before both men were found guilty. The jurors had the opportunity to choose the death penalty or life in prison. They gave them life in prison. The black juror later stated that he voted with the majority on the condition that the death sentence was not imposed.