Pratt’s Lawyers Seek Bail; Hearing Set for Tuesday
Lawyers for Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt filed court papers Thursday seeking bail for the former Black Panther Party leader whose 25-year-old murder conviction has been reversed.
Attorney Robert Garcia, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, argued that Pratt should be granted bail because the presumption of his guilt is not great, and he is not charged with an offense subject to the death penalty or life without parole.
Judge Everett W. Dickey, who overturned Pratt’s conviction, will hear Pratt’s request for bail in Orange County Superior court at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Pratt was released from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione on Thursday and transported to Santa Ana for Tuesday’s hearing.
Dickey overturned Pratt’s conviction, ruling that Los Angeles County prosecutors had suppressed material evidence that could have led jurors to reach a different result in Pratt’s original trial. Pratt, 49, was convicted in 1972 of the 1968 murder of elementary school teacher Caroline Olsen and the critical wounding of her husband during an $18 robbery on a Santa Monica tennis court.
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