Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (17 page)

In the 1980 court opinion denying Pratt's original appeal, the conspiracy theory, which Cochran later refurbished, is succinctly refuted:

First, it is noted that Julius Butler did not give the letter to the FBI but to a trusted friend (Sergeant Rice) for safekeeping only to be opened in the event of his death. . . . Second, logic dictates that if the FBI with the aid of local law enforcement officers had targeted Pratt and intended to "neutralize" him by "framing" him for the December 18, 1968, murder of Caroline Olsen they would not have waited over fourteen months after the letter was handed to Sergeant Rice to have the contents of the sealed letter disclosed.

The circumstances under which Butler's letter was finally opened are even more damning for the conspiracy claim. The FBI agents who had observed Butler transferring the sealed envelope, walked over to Sergeant Rice after Butler left and demanded that he turn over the envelope to them. Rice refused. Then, as a precaution, he gave the envelope to yet another black police officer, Captain Edward Henry, who put it in his safe deposit box, still sealed. Rice told no one in order that the va1 would not know its location. What next transpired is best told in Sergeant Rice's own words:

Soon after this incident [the initial demand for the letter from the FBI], the FBI threatened to indict me for obstruction of justice for refusing to turn over the letter to them. Some time the next year I was involved in a fight with a white Los Angeles police officer. Due to this fight, and other allegations against me, I became the subject of an internal police investigation. During this investigation I was questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department regarding what Julius Butler had given me and ordered to turn it over to the police department. When I refused, I was threatened with being fired for refusing a direct order.

The FBI was also pressuring Butler about his involvement in the Black Panther Party and a possible firearms violation. (Butler had purchased an illegal submachine gun in October 1968, while still a Panther, and did not want to reveal the name of the person he had given it too-another puzzling posture for a "paid informant.") In fact, the questioning of Butler by the FBI after he was observed delivering the envelope to Sergeant Rice is the principal source of the false impression successfully promoted by the Cochran team that Pratt was on the payroll as an informant for the agency. Yet, in turning down Pratt's 1980 appeal, the court noted that "It would be unnatural for the FBI not to be inquisitive about the contents of the sealed envelope once aware of its existence." In the records of the seven FBI interviews with Butler, the only mention of Pratt is "that Pratt had a machine gun was common knowledge" and that "Pratt also had a caliber .45 pistol." There is no mention of the crucial fact, still hidden in the sealed envelope, that Pratt had boasted of killing a white school teacher and wounding her husband on a Santa Monica tennis court in 1968.

In fact, an exhaustive review of the FBI records by a Deputy Attorney General of California states categorically that "Prior to [Pratt's] indictment [for the crime] in December 1970, there are no FBI documents connecting [Pratt] with the tennis court murder." Pratt's indictment was based on the evidence in the envelope sealed by Julius Butler. It was opened at Butler's request in October 1970-twenty-two months after the murder took place — because, as he put it, the FBI was "jamming" him. At the same time, the Internal Affairs investigators were also jamming Rice, who appealed to Butler to release the document.

The Cochran appeal that eventually secured Pratt's release in May 1997 added only minor details to the original 1980 appeal that was rejected. Its new element was information voluntarily turned over by prosecutors that seemed to amplify the claim that Butler had some kind of involvement with law enforcement
after
the sealed envelope was delivered to Rice. The key new claim, for example, was the existence of an "informant" card that the District Attorney's office voluntarily turned over to Cochran's team. When I asked one of the original prosecutors about this, he maintained that the "informant card" was insignificant. "When you take someone to lunch you have to provide a chit for the lunch," he explained. "'Informant' is a convenient category, and that's all there is to it." The record indicates nothing else. In the notes of the interviews that were submitted to the Court, Butler's consistent response to agents' questions is that he is no longer with the party and is not able to give them an informed opinion on the issue.

But no matter how one parses the language of these reports, or interprets "informant cards," none of the evidence brought forward by Cochran in any way alters the picture of Julius Butler's relations to law enforcement outlined above. Butler did not take his charges against Pratt to the police, but strenuously withheld them for nearly two years, until forced by the Internal Affairs investigation of Rice to give them up.

In conducting his appeal, Johnnie Cochran called Julius Butler a "conniving snake" and "liar" and "police informant." As in the Simpson case, he had great success with this line of attack before the credulous public and willing press. Los Angeles Urban League president John Mack was only one of many who swallowed the slander whole. At the time of Pratt's release, Mack told the
Los Angeles Times
: "The Geronimo Pratt case is one of the most compelling and painful examples of a political assassination on an African-American activist."

Cochran's brief for Pratt religiously followed the pattern of the Simpson defense. It was an attack on law enforcement as a racist conspiracy to "get" his client. A principal problem for Cochran's theory is the fact that Butler is black and that, until Cochran's charges, he was a responsible member of the community, a lawyer, a law-abiding citizen, and a church elder. As part of Cochran's assault on Butler's character he alleged that Butler carried a grudge, which was the result of thwarted ambition. Cochran claimed that when "Bunchy" Carter, the leader of the Los Angeles Panthers was killed in January 1969 by a rival gang headed by Ron ("Malauna") Karenga in a shoot-out at UCLA, Butler became jealous of the fact Pratt rather than he was made head of the party.

Once the story of the sealed envelope is understood, however, the Cochran hypothesis falls apart. If jealousy was Butler's motive, why didn't he go to the police immediately? Why did he hand over a sealed letter to a friend and wait nearly two years to deliver it to authorities who would indict Pratt, and then did so only under duress?

In fact, Butler did not even deposit his "insurance" letter into the safekeeping of Sergeant Rice immediately after the murder, when he was passed over for Pratt. He did so only after he was relieved of his Panther duties and only after he had been physically threatened by Pratt and his lieutenants, who were conducting a purge in the party's ranks seeking the "agents" who might have set up Bunchy Carter's murder. (One prosecutor I interviewed suggested that it was Pratt who had set up Carter. Pratt was in charge of Panther security, yet was absent when the shooting took place.) The cause of Butler's conflict with Pratt was not envy, but a growing concern about the party's direction. In his letter, Butler wrote:

During the year of 1969 I began to notice the party changing its direction from that set forth by Huey P. Newton, and dissented with some theorys [sic] and practices of the So. Calif. Leadership. During the months of June and July 1969 I more strongly critisized[sic] these Leaders, because I felt they were carelessly, and foolishly doing things that didn't have a direction benificial [sic] for the people. I also critisized [sic] the Physical Actions or threats to party members who were attempting to sincerly [sic] impliment [sic] programs that oppressed people could Respond to.

The incident that most depressed Butler was the pistol-whipping of a seventeen-year-old Panther named Ollie Taylor, who was suspected of working for Karenga's gang. The incident led to false imprisonment and assault-with-a-deadly-weapon charges against Butler, Geronimo Pratt, and Roger Lewis. Butler's feelings about this incident were so regretful that he pled guilty to the charges in the case. Pratt was also tried but the juries were hung 10-2 and 11-1 for conviction.

According to Butler, Pratt masterminded the torture-interrogation of Taylor, holding a cocked weapon at Butler's head while ordering him to beat the suspect. Under oath at his own trial, Pratt not only denied leading the interrogation but claimed that the beating had taken place before he arrived and that he had reprimanded Butler, telling him this was not the Panther way to deal with suspects. (We know, however, from other cases, like Alex Rackley's torture in New Haven, that it was.) Pratt then said he had relieved Butler of his position in the party's security force, and placed him under "house arrest." At Pratt's trial, the victim of the beating, Ollie Taylor, confirmed Butler's version of the events and flatly contradicted Pratt's story.

Reading Butler's testimony about the Ollie Taylor incident, I had a jolt of recognition that resolved any remaining doubt I may have had as to the integrity of Butler's account, not only of these matters, but of those regarding Pratt's guilt. For it was in examining Butler's testimony that Newton's story about the eroticism of violence in Pratt's psyche resurfaced in my mind with riveting force:

Q Was Ollie Taylor in the room at this time?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay?
A. Ollie Taylor was sitting in the middle of the room, and I was sitting next to Ollie Taylor, and I was trying to talk to Ollie Taylor on the basis of "Give as much information about yourself to clear yourself," and Geronimo stated to me that the shit he was talking was a bunch of bullshit... I looked over and he cocked the hammer on the pistol.
Q Where was the pistol pointed, if at all?
A. It was actually right between me and Ollie Taylor, because I was sitting side-by-side with Ollie Taylor.
Then I noticed that Geronimo had an erection, and he stated, "If you don't move, I'll blow your head off," and he said 'Furthermore, I think maybe you're siding with him,' so he told me to slap Ollie Taylor.
He say, "You interrogate," so I did it in the pretense of trying to-at that time I was frightened of Geronimo's behavior, very seriously frightened. I had never seen a man with an erection.

Before Butler could complete the sentence, his attorney interrupted with an objection that the course of inquiry was irrelevant.

But as far as I was concerned, the sentence did not need to be finished. Here were two different figures, both intimate with Pratt, but otherwise separated by distance, status, and motivation, who remarked on the erotic charge violence gave him.

Despite the persuasive evidence of Pratt's guilt and the persuasive testimony contained in the handling of the letter that Butler was not part of a police or FBI conspiracy to frame Pratt, Johnnie Cochran prevailed in court. In granting Pratt a new trial, Dickey concluded that "this was not a strong case for the prosecution without the testimony of [Julius] Butler," and that it was reasonably probable that Pratt could have obtained a different result "in the entire absence of Butler's testimony," or had the prosecution revealed Butler's contacts with law enforcement. His opinion did not go into any detail by way of explaining how these contacts would or should have affected the verdict, given the testimony of the sealed envelope.

Reading Dickey's opinion is a depressing experience for anyone concerned about American justice. The salient reason cited by Judge Dickey for overturning the original verdict is that the prosecution concealed the "fact" that "[Butler] had been, for at least three years before the trial, providing information about the Black Panther Party and individuals associated with it to law enforcement agencies on a confidential basis."

The statement, as we have seen and as court records show, is false and misleading. Julius Butler had no contact with the FBI or law enforcement prior to his delivery of the sealed letter to Sergeant Rice, seven months after the murder and less than two years before the trial. The letter's identification of Geronimo Pratt as the killer of Caroline Olsen was available to the jury and was a centerpiece of the court proceeding, a fact which is not even addressed in Dickey's opinion — nor is the whole history of Butler's withholding of the incriminating document despite efforts by the FBI and the police to pry it from him. These would seem to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that Julius Butler was not an informant and was not cooperating with the FBI, the police, or the prosecutors of Geronimo Pratt, prior to Pratt's arraignment for the murder. Moreover, Butler's testimony at the trial was entirely consistent with the information contained in the incriminating letter and with his behavior throughout the case.

Why hasn't justice prevailed in this matter? Why is a clearly guilty individual free? The answer lies in the climate of the times, in which the testimonies of officers of the law have become more readily impeachable than the testimony of criminals. As in the O. J. Simpson trial, the appeals process in the Pratt case has been turned by Johnnie Cochran into a class action libel against the Psi, the police, the prosecution, and its chief witness. And as in the Simpson case, Johnnie Cochran's fictional melodrama has defeated the politically incorrect truth.
^*

 

^*
This account of the case of Geronimo Pratt was written in 1997. Two years later, another appeal for a new trial, this time by prosecutors, was rejected by the court. Geronimo Pratt was set free.

IV
PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

 

11
Academic Politics

 

G
RADUATION CEREMONIES on America's college campuses have become occasions to reflect on the near total domination of the left over the institutions of higher learning, a politicization of academic life unprecedented in the history of our democracy. Typical of one recent graduation cycle was the ceremony at the University of Michigan, whose invited speaker was racial extremist Mamphela Ramphele, a leader of South Africa's far left "black consciousness" movement. The four previous graduations at Michigan featured First Lady Hillary Clinton, political ally and friend of Mrs. Clinton, Marian Wright Edelman, liberal cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, and former Spelman College president and veteran of the communist left Johnetta Cole. By contrast, notable conservatives like former Education Secretary William Bennett, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, authors Tom Clancy and William F. Buckley, and Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were passed over as potential orators not only by Michigan but by all three thousand-plus colleges and universities across the land.