Support justice for political prisoner

Support justice for political prisoner

Former student spends 25 years in jail despite evidence of
innocence

By Jerome R. Hoffman, M.D.

and Katherine C. King

We are asking the UCLA community to become involved with the
ongoing legal case of former UCLA student Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt.
Pratt has been in state prison for more than 25 years, although
there is overwhelming evidence that he did not commit the murder of
which he was convicted.

At the time of his arrest in 1969 (for the robbery and murder of
a woman on a Santa Monica tennis court), Pratt was a local leader
of the Black Panthers. Herein lies the key to his arrest, to the
evident lies that were told to his jury and to the deliberate
withholding of exculpatory evidence from his trial.

The late 1960s and early 1970s marked a period of significant
social upheaval in America, when large movements of ordinary
citizens challenged not only the Vietnam War and institutionalized
racism throughout our society, but also the fundamental role of
those in authority.

Some groups, like the American Indian Movement and the Black
Panthers, set up alternative structures of authority to deal with
poverty, inferior education and the double standard of justice that
dominant society seemed content to perpetuate.

Even amid the general political turmoil, the Panthers were a
visible, outspoken and charismatic group. Their following among
young African Americans was so large and loyal that FBI Director J.
Edgar Hoover perceived them as the single most dangerous threat to
national security.

Pratt was under FBI surveillance when he was accused of the
murder, and FBI memos stated that he had to be "neutralized." His
primary accuser was an FBI informant who had previously infiltrated
the Panthers and was thrown out of the organization by Pratt.
Despite disingenuous denials at the time, the trial was (as
subsequent revelations have shown) orchestrated in large part by
the FBI, which, it now seems evident, knew that Pratt was actually
hundreds of miles away (in Oakland) at the time the shooting
occurred!

A great many details of Pratt’s case, and our "justice" system’s
failure to protect him from spending a huge part of his life in
prison, have been unearthed by James McCloskey. McCloskey is well
known for his work with Centurion Ministries, which has
investigated and won new trials or caused dismissals of charges in
several cases involving indigent defendants wrongly accused.

McCloskey wrote in the L.A. Times earlier this month, "I have
conducted an exhaustive investigation of every single facet of this
case for three and a half years, and I have absolutely no doubt
that Pratt is completely innocent of this crime." He also wrote
that District Attorney Gil Garcetti agreed two and a half years ago
to review the trial process and the validity of its verdict, but
has since done nothing.

Garcetti, whose office received a great deal of negative press
regarding prominent cases (OJ Simpson, the Menendez brothers, the
officers who beat Rodney King and the McMartin preschool), will
soon come up for re-election, and would undoubtedly like to avoid
any press whatsoever about Geronimo Pratt. We nevertheless wish to
encourage members of the UCLA community to contact Garcetti’s
office to urge him to reopen the case, no matter how inexpedient.
(The number is (213) 974-3528; ask for Sandy Gibbons of Media
Relations.)

Pratt has, in fact, been an American political prisoner for most
of his adult life, as unpleasant as it may be for many of us to
think in these terms, and as difficult as it is to recognize that
this could occur in our own country. Justice for him has already
been 25 long years in coming; it is time for all of us to help
speed up the process.

Hoffman is a doctor of emergency medicine and King is a classics
and comparative literature faculty member. Both are members of the
Steering Committee of Concerned Faculty.Comments to
[email protected]