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A New Day For Geronimo

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

With a stroke of his pen, specially assigned Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey sent the case People v. Elmer G. Pratt, No. A-267020 into a spiraling free fall, down in flames. For the man called Geronimo, that pen stroke, which granted him a new trial based upon prosecutorial misconduct in withholding material evidence from the defense, was truly a long time in coming -- over 25 years.

For over a quarter of a century Geronimo languished in California hellholes, under an unjust conviction, and under the repressive, politically-charged thumbs of LA. Prosecutors, police and a judiciary intent on denying him any hint of freedom --- ever.

For many activists, Geronimo's imprisonment had become a bitter reality, hated yet accepted, like cancer. For some, the battle for his freedom was seen just as fatalistically.

Luckily, that fatalism did not infect Geronimo, a former Viet Nam veteran, who was decorated for his two tours in the war. What he found when he returned from Southeast Asia was the bitter evidence of another war -- a government war against Black Americans, and one in which he enlisted on the side of Black Liberation, through the Black Panther Party. This would be the bitterest war, the longest war, and a war where justice became the first casualty.

At Geronimo's 1972 murder trial, the state's star witness, Julius "Julio" Butler, swore under oath that "I've never been an informant." And the LA District Attorney sat in silence, knowing it was a lie. The jury, seeing a former Black Panther (Butler) testify against another Panther, could only assume that one on the stand was telling the truth, and the one in the dock was guilty.

The DA sat in silence, knowing Butler was not only and FBI informant, and an LAPD informant, but an LA District Attorney informant, for years before the trial.

Indeed, on July 14, 1972, during closing arguments to the jury, the prosecutor's silence turned into an outright lie, telling them that while Butler may have provided police with information on "the community," he "never informed on people." (Huh ?!?)

What is surprising is not that a Superior Court Judge found the Butler lies disturbing, and that they truly undermined the conviction, but that so many other state and federal jurists who looked at the same thing saw nothing. It is crucial to note that Judge Dickey had no more evidence (and certainly no "new" evidence) than had been presented by affidavit to other courts for 5 and 10 years. The other courts, staffed with mostly Reagan-era appointees, dismissed his claims perfunctorily, some in less than 24 hours. They knew (if they ever bothered to read his writs) that the states chief witness was a long-time FBI, LAPD and LA DA's informant; that he, as a convicted felon, received such favors as permission to carry a gun, enabled to do so by $200 given to Butler by a staffer in the DA's office. He was in known possession of a machine gun (that he gave to cops) but never charged. Other charges were dismissed, enabling him to go to law school (he is now an attorney). In Judge Dickey's words, "By failing to disclose to defense counsel the full facts known to law enforcement about Butler's activities, the prosecution was able to present him to the jury in a much more favorable light then would otherwise be the case. It allowed him to give the impression that he had severed both his connections with law enforcement and the Black Panther Party, and to appear as a reluctant witness who only identified Pratt to the police in the first place (Öon Aug, 10m 1969) as a means of self-preservation after he began to feel threatened by Pratt and others following his disaffection and break with the Black Panthers more than three years before trial" Neither did the retiring jurist utilize any new legal authority to find Geronimo's conviction unconstitutional, for he used a case dated a year before his trial ( In Re Ferguson, Calif. Supreme Court. 19710 [and a case decided by the US Supreme Court the same year he went to trial (Giglio v US, 1972)].

No new evidence. No new law. Yet a new day for Geronimo. Why?

The answer to the prosecution, imprisonment, denial of parole, and the reversal of his conviction lies in the realm of politics.

Targeted by the FBI as a Black Nationalist target to be (in their words) "neutralized" when he was promoted to the post of Deputy Minister of Defense of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black Panther Party, fingered by a police informant the day after he kicked the suspected snitch out of the party in an open murder case, denied parole over 14 times because (in their words) "He's still a revolutionary" denied access to documentary evidence (surveilance logs) "lost" by the FBI that would prove his innocence, and denied a hearing by every judge applied to in LA County, Geronimo was a prisoner of a war waged by the very government he went to Viet Nam to fight for. A war against Black America, against the remnants of the Black Panther Party, and a war against the very constitutional principles they swore to uphold.

He has spent over half his life in California gulaga.

Isn't it time for this war to end? Isn't it time fot this POW to go home?

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