Opinion ID: 774730
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: 3 Langan, who used the alias Commander Pedro, led a small, white-supremacist group known as the Aryan Republican Army (ARA) and, at times, as the Midwestern Bank Bandits. In 1991, he and his childhood friend, Richard Wild Bill Guthrie, founded the ARA after attending a Christian Identity meeting. The ARA was a copycat, neo-Nazi group inspired by the book The Silent Brotherhood, which detailed the exploits of an underground guerrilla bank robbery gang known as The Order. In the mid-1990s, the ARA committed a number of bank robberies throughout the midwest to support their avowed purpose of committing terrorist acts against the United States government. A portion of the proceeds from the bank robberies was then funneled to similar neo-Nazi causes, while the remainder was used to finance future robberies. Before his trial, Langan informed a Pretrial Services Officer that he had been a self-employed revolutionary with the goal of overthrowing the government. 4 In the fall of 1993, Langan went underground, breaking off all contact with his family and friends and staying in various motels. Langan, Guthrie, and an associate Shawn Kenny attempted to rob Society National Bank (SNB) in Springdale, Ohio during this period. Armed and wearing bulletproof vests, they drove to the bank. They brought with them disguises, a mock explosive device, and a police scanner. For reasons not made clear in the record, they abandoned their plans to rob the bank on the day in question. 5 On June 8, 1994, however, SNB was robbed shortly after it opened. The robbery was carried out by two armed gunmen wearing Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan masks. One of the robbers ordered everyone to the floor and removed money from the teller drawers while the other gunman stood watch in the lobby of the bank. The robbers stole $11,890 in federally insured funds that were attached to a dye pack. A dye pack is a safety device that is disguised as an ordinary, unused pack of currency. Soon after it passes through the magnetic field of the bank's doors, the dye pack is designed to explode, releasing red smoke, tear gas, and red dye. 6 While the robbers were driving away from SNB in a brown Chevy Citation, the dye pack exploded. The robbers threw some of the money out of the window as they fled the scene. They then abandoned the getaway car less than a block from the bank. The car was later discovered to be registered to Ed McMahon, one of Guthrie's aliases. Inside the car, the police recovered a Mark-21 practice hand grenade, a $20 bill with red-dye stain, and a police scanner. 7 Later that month, Guthrie met with Kenny in Cincinnati and gave him approximately $200 to compensate him for his earlier ventures, including the aborted attempt to rob SNB in the fall of 1993. The money was stained with red dye. Guthrie informed Kenny that he and Langan had been successful in robbing the bank on their second attempt, and that they had used a takeover command style as employed by The Order bandits in The Silent Brotherhood. 8 Four months later, on the morning of October 25, 1994, two masked men robbed the Columbus National Bank (CNB) soon after it opened. Guthrie had purchased a .22-caliber rifle in the Columbus area on the previous day. During the CNB robbery, the gunmen wore construction overalls, ski masks, hard hats, sunglasses, and gloves. The men ordered everyone to the floor and shouted to one another using Spanish phrases such as andale, andale and la bomba. At Langan's trial, Kenny testified that this diversionary technique was used by the white supremacists in The Silent Brotherhood in an attempt to divert the attention of authorities by passing themselves off as Hispanic. One of the robbers remained in the lobby to control the customers while the other drew his gun and jumped over the counter to collect the money. As he was taking the money from the teller drawers, he removed his ski mask, hard hat, and sunglasses and left them on a teller counter. The robbers stole $3,400 in federally insured funds from the bank. 9 CNB's assistant manager, Lisa Copley, later identified Langan as the robber. Copley testified at Langan's trial that she had seen his face clearly for about three seconds as he progressed down the teller line. When he took off the disguise, Langan was approximately four feet away from Copley, but he came within touching distance as he emptied the drawers. She saw him again when he returned to her area after attempting to steal money from the drive-up window. Following the incident, Copley described the robber as a white male, in his mid-thirties, weighing 165 pounds, 5 feet 8 inches tall, clean-shaven with dark hair and a medium build. 10 After the gunmen exited CNB, a black lunchbox containing a plastic pipe covered with wires was discovered behind a counter. The bomb was left at the scene to sow confusion and further divert police attention. A bomb squad was called to the scene, and the bank was evacuated. Upon arrival at the bank, bomb squad personnel photographed the device and then used a Nutrex Disruptor water cannon to render the pipe bomb safe. The Disruptor separated the components of the bomb without detonation. 11 These components were sent to the FBI laboratory for analysis. Steven Burmeister, an FBI toxicologist, conducted a chemical analysis on a powder sample from the device and concluded that it was composed of nonperforated disk double-based smokeless powder and a nonexplosive white powder consisting of calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, silicon dioxide, and aluminum compounds. At Langan's trial, Burmeister was qualified as an expert in forensic chemistry, specializing in the analysis of explosives and explosive residues in general, and pipe bombs in particular. He testified that smokeless powder is an explosive that is sensitive to heat, shock, and friction, and although it would burn more slowly because of the presence of the nonexplosive white powder, its explosive propensities were otherwise unaffected. 12 The other FBI expert to testify was Robert Heckman, a hazardous devices and explosives examiner, who addressed the engineering aspects of the device. He examined a photograph of the device before it was rendered safe, as well as the recovered debris. Relying upon Burmeister's characterization of the powder mixture as an explosive, Heckman determined that the device was capable of explosion. Furthermore, he determined that although it did not contain an apparent classic initiator, it could explode by mishandling alone, such as by dropping the pipe on the ground. He also found that the device was equipped with an electric circuit hooked to a pager and powered by two nine-volt batteries, as well as a mercury switch. Based on these findings, he concluded that the device was objectively a pipe bomb. 13 After being qualified as an expert in explosive and hazardous devices, Heckman testified that the pipe bomb contained the necessary components for a destructive device. He went on to state that, properly assembled and initiated, the device would explode, would cause property damage, personal injury, and possibly death. Heckman indicated, however, that he could not determine whether the mercury switch was operable before destruction because not enough fragments of the switch had been recovered to properly reconstruct the switch. He also testified that the wires appeared not to have been crimped properly for conduction, making it doubtful whether this method of detonation would have been successful or had even been intended. 14 In January of 1996, Langan was seized by a combined state-federal law enforcement team outside of a safe house in Columbus. The safe house was used by the ARA to store ammunition, firearms, and other bank robbery equipment. Guthrie had been captured three days earlier and had betrayed Langan, providing the authorities with critical details about their bank robbery exploits and with the location of their safe house. Based on Guthrie's information, law enforcement officials executed a raid on the property. The officers testified that they saw Langan brandishing a semi-automatic handgun from the back window of his van. They then riddled the van with more than 50 bullets, but Langan survived the gunfire with minor injuries and was placed under arrest. This dramatic confrontation was the subject of local television news stories. Copley was among those who saw the television coverage of Langan's capture. She testified at trial that when she saw the report, she instantly thought that Langan was the same man who had robbed CNB. 15 Law enforcement agents found several items in the safe house and the van that were connected to the SNB robbery. A Mark-21 grenade was discovered in a suitcase that was identified as belonging to Langan. The grenade had Langan's fingerprint on the hose clamp and was similar to the Mark-21 grenade found in the glove compartment of the getaway car used in the SNB robbery. Agents also recovered a pair of blue and white leather gloves with red-dye stain on them. An FBI chemist determined that the chemical make-up of the red dye was the same as the dye found on the $20 bill recovered from the SNB getaway car. A Ronald Reagan mask, similar to the masks worn during the SNB robbery, was found in Langan's van, as was a black lunchbox similar to the one containing the CNB pipe bomb. Two copies of The Silent Brotherhoodwere seized from the house. Officers also recovered hard hats, ski masks, and sunglasses that were identical to those left behind after the CNB robbery. 16 On February 15, 1996, a federal grand jury returned a seven-count indictment, charging Langan with the January assault on federal officers, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111, carrying and using firearms in connection to the assault, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § § 2 , 922(g), and 924(c), and failing to register a destructive device in violation of 26 U.S.C. §5861(d). A superseding indictment was returned by the grand jury on March 16, 1996, incorporating the charges of the earlier indictment and alleging that Langan had committed two counts of armed bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § § 2 and 2113(a) & (d), two additional counts of using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § § 2 and 924(c), and one count of using and carrying an explosive device during and in relation to a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). These later charges all related to the SNB and CNB robberies. 17 On March 18, 1996, Copley was interviewed by an FBI agent and shown a photo array. She informed the agent that she had seen Langan on television in connection with the January 1996 shootout. Copley went on to express her concern that I hope I don't recognize this individual from T.V. When shown the photos, however, Copley did not hesitate in selecting Langan's. It was the first and only one she selected among the array. 18 Langan filed a motion to sever the bank robbery and related firearm charges of the superseding indictment from the original assault and firearms counts. The district court granted his motion, resulting in Langan being tried in two separate proceedings. Langan also moved to exclude Copley's testimony. The court denied the motion, as well as Langan's motion to present the expert testimony of David F. Ross, a psychologist at the University of Tennessee. Langan sought to offer Dr. Ross's testimony in order to undermine Copley's eyewitness identification. 19 The district court recognized Dr. Ross as an expert in psychology solely for the purpose of a suppression hearing regarding Copley's identification of Langan. It reserved ruling on whether Dr. Ross would be qualified to testify at trial in the subspecialty of eyewitness identification. At the suppression hearing, Dr. Ross testified regarding a variety of factors that had the potential of affecting the accuracy of Copley's identification. These factors included the 14-month delay between the CNB robbery and the photo array, the distractions created by the robber's gun and the stress of the situation, and her exposure to his capture on television news. Dr. Ross also criticized the identification procedures used by the FBI in the photo array. The district court determined, under the tests set forth in Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 199-200 (1972), that (1) Copley's testimony was sufficiently reliable to be presented to the jury, and (2) Langan had failed to meet his burden of proving that the photo array was impermissively suggestive. 20 Dr. Ross was also prepared to offer a more specific discussion concerning the possibility of memory transference, or what Dr. Ross referred to as conscious inference or conscious transference. This phenomenon is the misidentification of a familiar but innocent person, more commonly called unconscious transference (although Dr. Ross takes issue with this label, based on his theory of how the process occurs in the brain). Dr. Ross's testimony would have proposed an alternative explanation for Copley's identification, suggesting that Copley was not recognizing Langan from the CNB robbery, but instead from the more recent television news coverage, even though she may have believed that she was identifying Langan from both. He had co-authored an article on the subject, Unconscious Transference and Mistaken Identity: When a Witness Misidentifies a Familiar but Innocent Person, 79 Journal of Applied Psychology 918 (1994). 21 Following a Daubert hearing, the district court refused to allow Dr. Ross to testify at trial as an expert in eyewitness identification. The court determined that Dr. Ross's proposed testimony failed to meet the requirements of Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence as interpreted by Daubert and its progeny. Using the two-part test developed in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), the district court concluded that Dr. Ross's proposed testimony on the factors influencing eyewitness accuracy would not have assisted the jury. Instead, the court determined that any testimony offered by Dr. Ross would have improperly invaded their province. 22 The district court also held that Dr. Ross's testimony concerning the transference theory was not sufficiently based on scientific knowledge, because it failed to meet the reliability standards established by Daubert. Citing Dr. Ross's own 1994 article, the court noted that Dr. Ross had personally called the theory into question when commenting that the literature provides mixed and somewhat weak support for unconscious transference and that the empirical evidence for the [theory's] existence is rather meager. The district court pointed out that even though Dr. Ross was given the opportunity at the suppression hearing to state that the theory was scientifically sound, he failed to effectively rebut the government's criticism of the theory. Moreover, the court found that Dr. Ross's methodologies were inadequate because he had never studied any victim or eyewitness of a bank robbery. 23 Finally, the district court questioned Dr. Ross's qualifications in the specific field of adult eyewitness identification. It noted that the great majority of Dr. Ross's work had focused on child eyewitness identification. The court also found it significant that Dr. Ross had been qualified to testify as an expert only once before, and in that instance his testimony related to a child eyewitness in a state court proceeding. 24 During the 22-day jury trial, the government presented more than 60 witnesses. The most important of these witnesses were two of Langan's coconspirators, Shawn Kenny and Kevin McCarthy. Kenny had been affiliated with the ARA from the time it began operations and had been part of the dry run at the SNB in 1993. Guthrie, Langan's chief cohort, had told Kenny that the second attempt at SNB had proved successful. As compensation for Kenny's efforts, Guthrie paid him with red-tinted money. McCarthy, an ARA member who was recruited shortly after the CNB robbery, testified that Langan told him that Langan had injured his knee while jumping over a teller counter and lost his mask during an earlier robbery. Guthrie was to have been a witness at the trial, but he hung himself in his prison cell in July of 1996. The government also presented substantial physical evidence recovered from the safe house that tied Langan to the robberies. 25 In February of 1997, the jury found Langan guilty on all counts related to the two bank robberies. Langan was found guilty by a second jury in October of 1997 on charges related to the assault on federal officers. For sentencing purposes, Langan's convictions were consolidated and resulted in a life sentence without the possibility of parole, plus 35 years. Langan was also ordered to pay restitution of $6,270 and a $400 fine. He filed this timely appeal in January of 1999.