Ex-Black Panther Elmer Pratt, whose murder conviction was voided after 27
years, dies at 63
by LINDA DEUTSCH, startribune.com
June 3rd 2011
LOS ANGELES - Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Black Panther Party leader who
spent 27 years in prison on a California murder conviction that was later
overturned, has died at the age of 63 in his adopted home of Tanzania.
Pratt died early Friday at home in Imbaseni village, 15 miles (24 kilometers)
from Arusha, Tanzania, where he had lived for at least half a decade, said a
friend in Arusha, former Black Panther Pete O'Neal.
Pratt's name and his long-fought case with its political backdrop became
emblematic of a tumultuous era in American history when the beret-wearing
Panthers raised their fists in defiance and carried big guns, striking fear in
white America.
The party, founded by Huey Newton in Oakland, Calif., in 1966, was targeted by
late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in a program which sent infiltrators into
their gatherings and recruited informants. One of them, Julius Butler, was the
key witness against Pratt when he was charged in 1968 with the Santa Monica
tennis court shooting of school teacher Caroline Olson.
Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said he was innocent and maintained
there were audiotapes that would prove he had been at a Black Panther meeting
in Oakland the day of the killing. His lawyers later said that FBI agents and
police hid and possibly destroyed wiretap evidence from the meeting which they
had under surveillance.
His conviction in 1972 came during a period of turmoil marked by shootouts
between police and Black Panthers, and the trial of activist professor Angela
Davis, who was accused of providing guns for Black Panthers in a Marin County,
Calif., courthouse shooting. She was acquitted of murder charges in a
high-profile trial.
Although the Panthers were associated with violence, they also established free
breakfast programs for poor children, health clinics and pest-control services
for those who needed them.
It was their high-profile appearances bearing rifles — often licensed and legal
— and gun battles with police, which took lives on both sides, that fueled
their legend.
In 1967, the FBI launched a counterintelligence program — COINTELPRO — against
what it termed "black hate groups" as well as other activists such as the
Weathermen and the Socialist Workers Party.
Agents were assigned to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize
the activities of black nationalists," Hoover said in a once-classified memo to
field agents.
The program's most controversial efforts may have been instigating a bloody
feud between the Panthers in Los Angeles and a rival black organization known
as US.
For years, Pratt supporters including well-known civil rights activists pressed
for his release to no avail. But two lawyers, Stuart Hanlon and Johnnie L.
Cochran, were relentless in pursuing the case. Each time they were turned down,
they filed new motions. In 1997, they won.
Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey granted him a new trial, saying the
credibility of prosecution witness Butler — who testified that Pratt had
confessed to him — could have been undermined if the jury had known of his
relationship with law enforcement. Pratt was freed later that month.
Cochran, best known for representing such clients as O.J. Simpson and Michael
Jackson, called the day Pratt's freedom was secured "the happiest day of my
life practicing law."
Prosecutors announced two years later that they would abandon efforts to retry
Pratt. But they never acknowledged he was wrongly convicted.
During the remaining 14 years of his life, Pratt divided his time between his
home in Louisiana and his adopted home in Tanzania, according to his associates
there.
Hanlon, the San Francisco attorney who helped Pratt win his freedom, told The
Associated Press that Pratt refused to carry resentment over his treatment by
the legal system. .
"He had no anger, he had no bitterness, he had no desire for revenge. He wanted
to resume his life and have children," he said. "He would never look back."
Pratt worked with the United African Alliance Community Center in Arusha for
the last nine years that he lived in the community, which sits near the base of
Mount Kilimanjaro, said O'Neal, who founded the organization 20 years ago to
empower youth.
"He's my hero. He was and will continue to be," O'Neal said. "Geronimo was a
symbol of steadfast resistance against all that is considered wrong and
improper. His whole life was dedicated to standing in opposition to oppression
and exploitation. ... He gave all that he had and his life, I believe,
struggling, trying to help people lift themselves up."
O'Neal said that Pratt, who suffered from high blood pressure, may have
suffered a heart attack or stroke.
When he learned he would not be tried again in Los Angeles, Pratt said he was
relieved that Los Angeles County prosecutors had "come to their senses."
"But, I am not relieved in that they did not come clean all the way in exposing
their complicity with this frame-up, this 27-year trauma," he added.
He settled a false-imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and
city of Los Angeles for $4.5 million in 2000.
___
Tom Odula reported for The Associated Press from Nairobi, Kenya. AP writers
Denise Petski and Jacob Adelman contributed to this story from Los Angeles.
Original Page: http://www.startribune.com/nation/123126303.html?source=error
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