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 webmaster@db.asucla.ucla.edu
advertise
contact us
top of page