Signs Call for New Pratt Trial

Hoping to increase public pressure for a new trial for Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, supporters of the imprisoned former Black Panther Party leader unveiled a billboard Monday on Century Boulevard asking how long a man they see as innocent must wait for justice.

Pratt, who has been behind bars for 26 years, is serving a life sentence for murdering a schoolteacher and wounding her husband during a 1968 robbery that netted $18 on a Santa Monica tennis court.

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He has maintained since his arrest that he was in Oakland when the murder occurred and that the FBI knew that because the bureau had him under surveillance.

His conviction, he says, is the result of his having been targeted for “neutralization” as an effective leader by the FBI--an assessment supported by retired FBI Agent M. Wesley Swearingen.

Pratt has a petition for a new trial pending in Los Angeles Superior Court, and his attorneys are hoping to win a hearing on what they say is new evidence pointing to his innocence. The district attorney’s office has opposed Pratt’s petition.

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The billboard, which rises above the golden arches of a McDonald’s restaurant just west of La Cienega Boulevard, reads: “An innocent man in prison for 26 years. Geronimo Pratt. Los Angeles, how long must he wait for justice?”

A similar sign has been installed in a bus shelter near the downtown Criminal Courts Building, and two more will be put in other bus shelters shortly, said crusading lay minister Jim McCloskey, whose New Jersey-based Centurion Ministries is working for Pratt’s release. The billboard and signs will remain up for at least four months, McCloskey said.

A Southern California businessman who wishes to remain anonymous donated the $60,000 for the billboard and signs, McCloskey said.

The donor and his family “are very upset by the injustice Mr. Pratt has suffered for the last 26 years and by the intransigence of law enforcement,” which continues to oppose Pratt’s release, McCloskey said.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., one of Pratt’s attorneys, said the district attorney’s office’s recent disclosure that it had found the name of Julius Butler, a key witness against Pratt, in a file of its own confidential informants brings the case to a pivotal point.

Butler testified at Pratt’s 1972 trial that he had never been an informant for law enforcement.

FBI documents released after that trial showed that Butler, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and former Black Panther, provided information to the bureau for about two years. Two former Los Angeles Police Department officers have given sworn statements that he also provided information to them.

With the revelation that Butler has turned up in the district attorney’s file of confidential informants, Cochran said, he will argue at a hearing Wednesday that Pratt should be released on bail while his petition is pending.