David Koon is on hand for closing arguments in the trial of Dr. Randeep Mann on charges that he plotted the bombing of state Medical Board chairman Trent Pierce of West Memphis. Mann had had many run-ins with the Medical Board. The closings finally were concluded at 7 p.m. Wednesday and the jury will begin deliberations Thursday.
Jury instructions took longer than anticipated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Whatley closed for the government. In a two-hour closing that ended shortly after 4 p.m., she called Mann a “gun nut” who had the arsenal and the motive to hurt Pierce. “This is a case about a man who has an obsession with firearms. The defendant is a gun nut. He is a man obsessed with guns.”
The prosecutor talked in detail about unregistered machine guns and other weapons found at Mann’s house, plus the grenades found wit in 875 feet of his house and a grenade launcher found at the house. She also noted similarities between munition containers found in his house and near his house. The prosecutor took the jury through other circumstantial evidence — the similarity of a tire rigged with a bomb at Pierce’s house and a tire owned by a friend of Mann’s, for example. The jury heard again about grenades Mann had bought from a weapons dealer and about an e-mail Mann sent to his brother that included a picture of Pierce.
Whatley finished with an extensive timeline and a recap of all the testimony. “Randeep Mann had motive, he singled Trent Pierce out,” the prosecutor said. Mann’s wife is also on trial for misleading investigators.
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