| Updated: 8/18/2009 7:21 pm |
Published: 8/18/2009 5:24 pm |
Attorneys for a Russellville doctor Randeep Mann are speaking to FOX16 about their client being named the prime suspect in the bombing of the State Medical Board Chairman Dr. Trent Pierce.
Mann entered a not guilty plea to multiple federal charges of illegally stockpiling grenades and machine guns.
His attorneys tell FOX16's David Goins they're going to fight the newest charges as the spotlight brightens on their client.
His attorneys say the grenades found near his home are not his and the government hasn't shown they are. And the government has carelessly thrown Mann's name in with the bombing of the state medical board chairman.
For the first time attorneys react to the ATF's assertion that Mann is the prime suspect in the bombing Dr. Pierce.
"Well didn't they say that in the press two months ago?," Hall responded. Reporter says: "No, he said it for the first time last week." Hall says: "Well it was in the press two months ago." Reporter says: "It was person of interest prior to the last hearing, now its prime suspect they say." Hall says: "Well, what's the difference?"
The ATF says there is a difference. The totality of the evidence puts the Russellville doctor into sharper focus.
Evidence the government isn't talking about and his attorney John Wesley Hall describes as "pretty thin.". Saying his client has an alibi. Mann was in Russellville when the bomb underneath Pierce's car exploded 200 miles away in West Memphis.
"If the bomb was planted sometime, I suppose, from when Dr. Pierce got home and when he got up, Dr. Mann says he was at the gym he always goes to every night and they've got computer records showing he checked in and that he was home in bed when his wife called him in the morning and said you've got patients, come on in," Hall says.
Mann is not charged in the attack on Pierce but his attorneys say they're talking about the possibility of it happening.
"It's fairly inevitable that something may happen on that one way or another,” Hall says. "They're going to say we're going to do it or not going to do it. Since they've outed him as a suspect now they're sort of in a position of having to un-out him if they're not going to go forward. They put that burden on themselves by doing that."
Mann is set to go to trial by jury on August 31. Hall says he plans to file motions challenging his most recent charges that could lead to a delay. U.S. attorney Jane Duke says the government would not oppose a motion for continuance.
