Commission Forms to Seek Ex-Black Panther’s Release

The most recent in a long series of efforts to free imprisoned former Black Panther leader Elmer (Geronimo) Pratt got underway Saturday, when attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. announced the formation of a blue-ribbon citizens commission to pressure the district attorney’s office into giving Pratt a new hearing.

Pratt has been in prison for 25 years, serving a life sentence for the 1968 robbery and murder of schoolteacher Caroline Olsen and the wounding of her husband, Kenneth, on a Santa Monica tennis court.

Pratt has steadfastly maintained his innocence, contending that he was in Oakland at the time. He and his supporters have maintained that he was a victim of a plot to frame radical black leaders.

Cochran, who was one of Pratt’s original attorneys, joined Saturday with members of the International Campaign to Free Geronimo Pratt and other supporters to urge citizens to contact Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who Cochran said has been reviewing the case for more than a year.

“From the very beginning we believed, and I knew, that Geronimo Pratt was innocent,” Cochran said. “Why should we be afraid to give the man a hearing?”

Cochran said he has been “obsessed” by the case ever since learning after the trial that a key prosecution witness was an FBI informant and that Kenneth Olsen initially identified another man as the shooter.

Cochran said letters have been written to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and the FBI seeking missing wiretap logs that could show that Pratt made phone calls from Oakland to the Panthers headquarters in Los Angeles on the day of the murder.

Arthur A. Fletcher, former chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, said he is prepared to request that the commission make a formal investigation into the Pratt case.

Members of the blue-ribbon committee include Motown Records CEO Jheryl Busby, rapper Chuck D., City Council members Mark Ridley-Thomas and Jackie Goldberg, actor Mike Farrell and former Panther Party leader Kathleen Cleaver.