Elmer G. Pratt, Jailed Panther Leader, Dies at 63
by DOUGLAS MARTIN, nytimes.com
June 3rd 2011
Elmer G. Pratt, a Black Panther leader who was imprisoned for 27 years for
murder and whose marathon fight to prove he had been framed attracted support
from civil rights groups and led to the overturning of his conviction, died on
Thursday in a village in Tanzania, where he was living. He was 63.
Mr. Pratt, who was widely known by his Panther name, Geronimo ji-Jaga, had high
blood pressure and other ailments, his longtime lawyer, Stuart Hanlon, said.
Mr. Hanlon said he did not know the exact cause of death.
To his supporters — among them Amnesty International, the N.A.A.C.P. and the
American Civil Liberties Union — Mr. Pratt came to symbolize a politically
motivated attack on the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and other radical
groups. But from the start, the grisly facts of the murder of a 27-year-old
teacher dominated discussions of the case, including those of the parole board
that denied parole to Mr. Pratt 16 times.
The teacher, Caroline Olsen, and her husband, Kenneth, were accosted by two
young black men with guns on Dec. 18, 1968, in Santa Monica, Calif. They took
$18 from Mrs. Olsen’s purse. “This ain’t enough,” one said, according to the
police, and ordered the couple to “lie down and pray.”
Shots were fired, hitting Mr. Olsen five times and his wife twice. Mrs. Olsen
died 11 days later. Mr. Pratt was arrested.
The case against Mr. Pratt included evidence that both the pistol used as the
murder weapon and the red-and-white GTO convertible used as the getaway car
belonged to him. An informant wrote an eight-page letter asserting Mr. Pratt
had bragged to him that he committed the murder.
Fellow Panthers did not support Mr. Pratt’s alibi that he was in Oakland, more
than 300 miles away, at the time of the killing. A witness identified Mr. Pratt
as one of two men who tried to rob a store shortly before the murder. And Mr.
Olsen identified Mr. Pratt as the assailant.
Mr. Pratt was convicted of first-degree murder on July 28, 1972, and sentenced
to life imprisonment a month later.
Information gradually surfaced that the jury had not known about when it
reached its verdict. Mr. Olsen had identified someone else before he identified
Mr. Pratt. Documents showed that the informant who said that Mr. Pratt had
confessed to him had lied about himself. Wiretap evidence that might have
supported Mr. Pratt’s alibi mysteriously vanished from F.B.I. files.
A public debate erupted over the extent to which Mr. Pratt and the Black
Panthers had been singled out by law enforcement agencies. J. Edgar Hoover,
director of the F.B.I., called the Panthers a threat to national security, and
an F.B.I. report spoke of “neutralizing” Mr. Pratt. Others saw the Panthers and
their leaders as a voice of black empowerment and as a service group that
provided free breakfasts to the poor.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1997, John Mack, president of the
Los Angeles Urban League, said, “The Geronimo Pratt case is one of the most
compelling and painful examples of a political assassination on an
African-American activist.”
As Mr. Pratt languished in solitary confinement, his supporters shed light on
his case by hanging a banner from the Statue of Liberty. His lawyers, led by
Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. — famed for defending O.J. Simpson — assembled
ammunition for an appeal.
In 1997 a California Superior Court judge, Everett W. Dickey, vacated Mr.
Pratt’s conviction on the grounds that the government informant, Julius C.
Butler, had lied about being one. Moreover, it was learned that the Los Angeles
Police Department, the F.B.I. and prosecutors had not shared with the defense
their knowledge that Mr. Butler was an informant.
A juror, Jeanne Rook Hamilton, told The Times: “If we had known about Butler’s
background, there’s no way Pratt would have been convicted.”
California lost its appeal to nullify Judge Dickey’s decision in 1999, and the
Los Angeles County district attorney ruled out a new trial. In 2000, Mr. Pratt
received $4.5 million from the federal and local governments as settlement in a
wrongful-imprisonment suit.
Mr. Pratt said he would have preferred to press the matter in a trial so he
could air the government’s “evil scheme,” but decided to accept his lawyers’
advice and take the settlement.
Elmer Gerard Pratt, the name he rejected at 20 as that of a “dirty dog” slave
master, was born on Sept. 13, 1947, in Morgan City, La. His father was in the
scrap-metal business. Elmer liked to shoot rabbits and sell them. He was a high
school quarterback, then joined the Army, serving two tours in Vietnam, earning
two Purple Hearts and emerging a sergeant.
Mr. Pratt attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied
political science and joined the Panthers. He rose to lead the Los Angeles
branch. He moved to Tanzania because he had friends there and had always wanted
to live in Africa.
He is survived by a daughter, three sons, two sisters and two brothers. He was
godfather to the slain rapper Tupac Shakur.
Original Page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04pratt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
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