The ex-Black Panther could have faltered at any of several points. But dogged legal work, and crucial information released by the opposing camp, have taken him closer to his goal.

By Edward J. Boyer Jan. 14, 1997

A petition for a writ of habeas corpus–a request that a court free a prisoner it finds is held unlawfully–is among the longest of legal longshots.

On four previous occasions since he was convicted of murder in 1972, former Black Panther Party leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt’s attorneys had filed such petitions in unsuccessful efforts to free him.

So it was with little optimism–and largely because they had no other tactic to put in play–that Pratt filed his fifth petition 11 months ago.

What followed has been a surprising roller coaster ride that has taken Pratt’s supporters from extreme highs of optimism to the depths of depression.

The ride has put them closer to winning a new murder trial than they have ever been in the 24 years since Pratt was convicted of shooting schoolteacher Caroline Olsen to death during a 1968 robbery in Santa Monica.

Next month, Santa Ana Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey will hear final arguments on whether Pratt’s conviction should be reversed. To get this far, Pratt’s lawyers have overcome several legal hurdles, any one of which could have spelled their doom.

They had to:

• Persuade a judge to issue an order to show cause–an order requiring prosecutors to come into court and show why Pratt’s conviction should be upheld.
• Survive a judge’s attempt to transfer the case to the California Supreme Court.
• Withstand the disqualification of the entire Los Angeles Superior Court bench and a transfer of the case to Orange County.
• Persuade Dickey to conduct the evidentiary hearing that will determine whether the habeas corpus petition will be granted.

Filing yet another petition “was no great genius-derived master plan,” admits one of those who has championed Pratt’s cause, lay minister Jim McCloskey. “We were in the dark bumping from wall to wall.”

The first surprise for Pratt’s dispirited defense team came in February when supervising Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Judge James A. Bascue issued an order for prosecutors to show cause and assigned the case to Judge Michael A. Cowell.

“It was the greatest thing that happened,” San Francisco attorney Stuart Hanlon, one of Pratt’s lead attorneys along with Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., said of Bascue’s order. The judge could have simply denied Pratt’s request outright, as judges had done with two earlier writs.

After getting the case, however, Cowell ruled in April that he did not have jurisdiction to hear Pratt’s petition, and he attempted to transfer the petition to the state Supreme Court.

Pratt’s lawyers left court that day deflated, convinced that they stood no chance with the conservative high court.

But the Supreme Court sent the case back to Cowell a month later, saying he indeed had jurisdiction. Pratt’s lawyers said they had “dodged a bullet.”

With the case back before Cowell, Pratt’s lawyers began shaping their arguments for the next hurdle: a hearing on evidence they say justifies overturning his conviction.

They argued that the entire prosecution case was built on false testimony from key witness Julius C. “Julio” Butler, who testified that Pratt had confessed to shooting Olsen and wounding her husband.

Butler testified that he had never been an informant for law enforcement. But FBI documents released years after Pratt’s trial showed that Butler, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and a rival of Pratt’s in the Panthers, had been giving information to agents for more than two years before Pratt’s conviction.

Three jurors have said they would never have convicted Pratt had they known about Butler’s contacts with FBI agents.

More than any other development, the revelations of Butler’s role have helped the Pratt case become a cause celebre among groups as diverse as Amnesty International, Hollywood celebrities and clergy.

Prosecutors opposed an evidentiary hearing, saying Pratt’s request was “speculative” and “groundless.” Before Cowell had to decide on holding a hearing, another surprise surfaced to Pratt’s benefit: As the district attorney’s office reviewed the conviction in response to a report from McCloskey, an investigator said Butler admitted to being a paid informant for the office–the very agency that prosecuted Pratt.

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When investigators checked the district attorney’s index of confidential informants, they found Butler’s name.

“Butler’s confidential informant cards were the biggest surprise of all in this hearing,” Hanlon said. “They could have covered it up. To their credit they didn’t.”

Said Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti: “It was the right and legal thing to do.”

The existence of those cards was the “linchpin around which the {evidentiary} hearing developed,” Hanlon said. “No doubt about that. Without them we would have had an entirely different hearing.”

But the hearing was not to be held in Cowell’s courtroom.

The judge disqualified the entire Los Angeles Superior Court bench from hearing the case because fellow Judge Richard P. Kalustian–the prosecutor at Pratt’s murder trial–was going to be called as a witness.

The case was sent to the State Judicial Council, which assigned it to Orange County, where Dickey was named to preside.

The mood in the Pratt camp again turned gloomy. A new judge was not bound by anything that happened in Cowell’s courtroom, they said. While Pratt’s lawyers felt Cowell had hinted in court that he would grant an evidentiary hearing, a new judge could dismiss Pratt’s petition without so much as hearing a word from either side.

That had happened to Pratt before, when his lawyers were able to get an order to show cause from a San Francisco Superior Court judge in 1991, only to have prosecutors successfully argue to have the case transferred to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner took only 24 hours to deny the 150-page petition.

In Orange County, however, Dickey granted an evidentiary hearing, and the judge has allowed Pratt’s lawyers to pursue virtually every issue they wanted to raise about Pratt’s trial and conviction, despite objections from prosecutors.

When he granted the hearing in November, Dickey said he wondered why it was only being disclosed now that Butler’s name was in the district attorney’s informant file. “It’s clear that this is not a typical case,” Dickey said. “It cries out for resolution.” ◼︎