Subject: M-I: Fwd: 1/8/97 - Geronimo Hearing
From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman)
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 01:08:47 EST


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Forwarded message:
From:	nattyreb-AT-ix.netcom.com (Marpessa Kupendua)
To:	nattyreb-AT-ix.netcom.com
Date: 97-01-09 07:16:50 EST



>                           U P D A T E
>                              _____
>_________________________________________________________________
> 
>                     GERONIMO JI JAGA HEARING 
>________________________________________________________________
> 
>                              -----
> 
>       For more information on the case of geronimo ji Jaga      
>                   please call:  (213) 294-8320
>   
>     The FREE GERONIMO COMMITTEE meets every Tuesday at 6:30 PM
>                  Faith United Methodist Church
>                1713 West 108th St., Los Angeles
> 
>        Funds are urgently needed, please send donations to:
> 
>                    GERONIMO PRATT DEFENSE FUND
>                         P.O. Box 781328 
>                      Los Angeles, CA 90016
> 
>                  PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE (PDC)
>                         P.O. Box 77462
>                     San Francisco, CA 94107
>                          (510) 839-0852
> 
>        Send contributions for Geronimo's legal defense to:
> 
>                  PRISONER LITIGATION TRUST FUND
>                       c/o Stuart Hanlon
>                       214 Duboce Street
>                     San Francisco, CA 94103
> 
>                              -----
> 
> 
>     http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/STATE/t000002089.html
> 
>                              -----
>_________________________________________________________________
> 
>          FORMER BLACK PANTHER'S LAWYERS WRAP UP CASE
>_________________________________________________________________
> 
>   Los Angeles Times
>   Wednesday, January 8, 1997
> 
>   [IMAGE] Courts: Attorneys seeking new trial for Pratt say they
>   proved that key witness was 'classic' police informant.
>   
>   By EDWARD J. BOYER, Times Staff Writer
>   
> 
>   SANTA ANA -- Wrapping up their case to have Elmer "Geronimo"
>Pratt's murder conviction overturned, lawyers for the imprisoned
>former Black Panther Party leader Tuesday said they had
>demonstrated that the key prosecution witness against Pratt had a
>"classic" informant relationship with police.
> 
>   Showing that former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy and
>ex-Panther Julius C. "Julio" Butler was a police informant is
>crucial to Pratt's effort to win a new trial on the murder charge
>that sent him to prison in 1972.
> 
>   As Pratt's hearing enters its final days, with prosecutors
>presenting their case, Pratt's legal team has suffered two blows.
>Attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. has gone to New York to prepare
>for the launch of his new show on Court TV and will not return
>until final arguments. In addition, San Francisco attorney Stuart
>Hanlon's wife Kathy was diagnosed last week with leukemia.
> 
>   She will be hospitalized at least for a month, said Hanlon,
>48, who became involved in the Pratt's case when he was a 24-
>year-old law school student. As serious as his wife's illness is,
>Hanlon said, she told him to return to Southern California and
>complete this hearing on a case he has been involved in nearly
>all of his adult life.
> 
>   Key evidence against Pratt came from Butler when he testified
>nearly 25 years ago that Pratt confessed to him that he had shot
>schoolteacher Caroline Olsen to death and critically wounded her
>husband during a 1968 robbery that netted $18 on a Santa Monica
>tennis court.
> 
>   Pratt, 49, has contended that he was in the Bay Area when the
>murder was committed, and that FBI agents knew it because they
>had him under surveillance.
> 
>   Butler implicated Pratt in the Olsen murder as part of an FBI
>effort to "neutralize" Pratt, then head of the Panthers in Los
>Angeles, Pratt's lawyers say.
> 
>   Butler, 64, now a lawyer and chairman of the board at Los
>Angeles First African Methodist Episcopal Church, testified that
>he had never been an informant for law enforcement. But FBI
>documents released seven years after Pratt's conviction show that
>he had been providing information to agents for more than two
>years before Pratt's trial.
> 
>   Hanlon said outside court Tuesday that testimony over 13 days
>has produced different, but better, evidence than initially
>expected.
> 
>   He said that evidence is focused on August 1969, when Butler
>gave a letter implicating Pratt in the Olsen murder to Los
>Angeles Police Sgt. Duwayne Rice. At that time, Hanson said,
>Butler was under investigation by the FBI for possessing a
>Thompson submachine gun.
> 
>   Two retired Los Angeles police officers, Capt. Edward Henry
>and Rice, testified that in August 1969 Butler led them to a
>vacant lot in either Pasadena or Altadena where they recovered a
>cache of alleged Panther weapons, including a Thompson submachine
>gun -- just days after Butler gave Rice the letter incriminating
>Pratt.
> 
>   At the time, Butler, Pratt and five other Panthers were also
>charged with abducting and beating Ollie Taylor, a 17-year-old
>Panther they suspected of being an infiltrator from a rival
>group.
> 
>   Without consulting his attorney, Butler pleaded guilty to four
>felonies in the Taylor case. One of Butler's previous attorneys
>testified in Santa Ana that he felt Butler had no fear of
>receiving serious punishment after pleading guilty.
> 
>   Butler was sentenced to probation and a $200 fine, an
>extraordinarily light punishment for four felonies, Pratt's
>lawyers say. That sentence was justified, in part, by a favorable
>probation report that included a statement from Sgt. Rice that
>Butler "has been cooperative" with Los Angeles police.
> 
>   "The one thing we never saw coming into this hearing was this
>focal point of Butler being an informant for Rice and Henry,"
>Hanlon said.
> 
>   Butler's relationship with Rice and Henry "is your classic
>informant relationship with law enforcement," Hanlon said.
> 
>   Butler acknowledged during his testimony that he had provided
>information to FBI agents and Los Angeles police but insisted
>that he has never been an informant.
>   Prosecutors called their first witness Tuesday and are
>expected to call about seven more. 
> 
>   Copyright Los Angeles Times
> 
>*              *              *              *              *
> 
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