Elmer Pratt, former Black Panther leader whose murder conviction was
overturned, dies at 63
by Robert J. Lopez, washingtonpost.com
Mr. Pratt’s case became a cause celebre for a range of supporters — including
elected officials, human rights activists and clergy — who believed he was
framed by the Los Angeles police and the FBI because he was African American
and a member of the radical Black Panthers.
Mr. Pratt maintained that the FBI knew he was innocent because the agency had
him under surveillance in Oakland when the slaying was committed in Santa
Monica.
“Geronimo was a powerful leader,” Stuart Hanlon, Mr. Pratt’s longtime San
Francisco attorney, told the Los Angeles Times. “For that reason he was
targeted.”
Mr. Pratt was arrested in 1970 and two years later convicted and sentenced to
life in prison in the 1968 fatal shooting of Caroline Olsen and the serious
wounding of her husband, Kenneth, in a robbery that netted $18. The case was
overturned in 1997 by an Orange County Superior Court judge who ruled that
prosecutors at Mr. Pratt’s murder trial had concealed evidence that could have
led to his acquittal.
A federal judge later approved a $4.5 million settlement in Mr. Pratt’s
false-imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit.
Mr. Pratt, who also went by Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, was born Sept. 13, 1947, in
Morgan City, La. The youngest of seven children, Mr. Pratt was raised as a
Catholic by his mother and his father, who operated a small scrap-metal
business.
Growing up in the segregated South amid a tight-knit black community had a
profound effect on Mr. Pratt, he later told interviewers.
“The situation was pretty racist, on the one hand,” he said in an interview
with Race and Class magazine. “On the other, it was full of integrity and
dignity and the pride of being part of this community . . . the values, the
work ethic, very respectful to everyone.”
Mr. Pratt volunteered to join the Army and served with the 82nd Airborne in
Vietnam. After he was discharged, Mr. Pratt moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and
enrolled at UCLA. While attending classes, he met Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, a
Louisiana native and an early member of the Black Panther Party who recruited
him to the cause and gave him the “Geronimo” nickname.
Mr. Pratt was convicted in the 1968 shooting after compelling testimony by
Julius C. “Julio” Butler, a one-time Black Panther associate who told jurors
that Mr. Pratt discussed “the mission” with him before the attack and admitted
later that evening that he had shot the couple. Government records later showed
that Butler was an FBI informant at the time. Butler denied being an informant.
Nonetheless, three jurors who convicted Mr. Pratt said they would have held out
for acquittal if they had known of Butler’s relationship with the FBI.
For more than two decades, Mr. Pratt’s legal team — led by Hanlon and Los
Angeles lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. — struggled to win Mr. Pratt’s freedom.
Cochran, who died in 2005 and was a key member of O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team,”
said Mr. Pratt’s case was the most important of his career.
After he was released from Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County, Mr. Pratt
held no animosity toward authorities who had imprisoned him, Hanlon said. “He
was at peace with himself,” the attorney said.
— Los Angeles Times
Original Page:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/elmer-pratt-former-black-panther-leader-whose-murder-conviction-was-overturned-dies-at-63/2011/06/03/AGqb1TIH_story.html
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