For 23 years former Black Panther Party leader and Vietnam veteran Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) has been locked up for a crime he did not commit. Eleven times he has been denied parole because he refuses to renounce his commitment to black liberation or confess to a murder committed by others. Court after court has refused even to hear the overwhelming proof of his innocence. He remains in prison today because, as the District Attorney's representative said at Geronimo's 1987 parole hearing, "He's still a revolutionary".
Geronimo was framed in 1971 for the US$22 robbery and murder of Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968. The surviving witness had initially identified another man as the killer, a fact suppressed at the trial. The prosecution's chief witness Julius Butler had been an informant for the Los Angeles Police Department since 1966 and for the FBI since at least May 1969: on the witness stand he denied he had ever worked for either agency.
FBI wire-tap logs proving Geronimo was in Oakland (640 kilometres away) at the time of the shooting were "disappeared". (Retired FBI agent Wesley Swearingen, who had seen the logs, noted this was the first time in his 25 years at the Bureau that wire-tap logs were missing.)
A recent investigation by James McCloskey, a lay minister with Centurion Ministries who has dedicated himself to the cases of innocent people sentenced to life in prison or execution, has thrown dramatic new light on the frame-up. McCloskey's investigation links the murder to two petty criminals — Larry Hatter and Herbert Swilly — associates of the fink Butler. McCloskey found photographs of Swilly and Hatter which bear a strong resemblance to composite sketches of the killers prepared one day after the shooting.
A declaration of Tyrone Hutchinson, a former Panther who had been picked up by the cops in 1970 for questioning in connection with the Olsen murder, states that both of these men "said they had been present at the tennis court and they described details of the incident". Hutchinson's declaration was completely — and illegally — kept from the defense and the court during the trial.
After meeting with McCloskey, Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti announced on January 3 that his office would review Geronimo's case.
In early January, FOX-TV in Los Angeles ran a three-part series on the case. The favourable publicity generated by the FOX coverage provoked retaliation by prison officials. Geronimo was immediately transferred to Mole Creek State Prison where he was denied his own cell, a necessity due to medical problems stemming from his Vietnam war wounds (he received two Purple Hearts, along with various decorations for valour and meritorious service). A temporary restraining order restored his "single cell status" late in February.
Geronimo ji Yaga is one of only two people in the United States recognised by Amnesty International as political prisoners (the other is Leonard Peltier). Like many other Black Panther Party leaders and members, he was targeted by COINTELPRO, the FBI's counterintelligence program which harassed, infiltrated and disrupted the black liberation, native American and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
Thirty-eight Black Panthers were killed during this period: Geronimo himself escaped assassination on December 8, 1969, during a five-hour police siege of the LA Panther headquarters, only because he was sleeping on the floor to relieve the pain from spinal injuries he had received in Vietnam, and escaped the fusillade fired at his bed.
For more information, contact the Justice for Geronimo Pratt Campaign, 214 Duboce Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94103.