BY HARRY RING
LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles District Attorney's office, which railroaded Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt to prison 27 years ago, took some solid blows at a hearing to determine if Pratt should be granted a new trial. The former Black Panther Party leader is serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit. He was jailed in 1970 and convicted in 1972.

Closing summations on the motion for a new trial were heard March 13 by Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey. Arguing against the motion for a new trial, Harry Sondheim, a veteran staffer in the D.A.'s office, ended by philosophizing that Pratt did not get a "perfect" trial, but did get "a fair trial." The TV camera covering the hearing panned in on Pratt staring at Sondheim with astonishment. And Judge Dickey bluntly took issue with some of Sondheim's key arguments.

In his summation, Sondheim conceded that in the trial, the defense had been denied information it was entitled to. For instance, he acknowledged, it should have been told that the DA's office had given $200 to its key witness, Julius Butler, to buy a gun. Sondheim tried to dance around the fact that the defense - and the jury - had not known that Butler was a police informer. He operated in the Panthers for the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, and - only recently disclosed - for the DA's office itself. Judge Dickey had declared he wanted to hear testimony explaining Butler's inclusion in a list of DA informers, "and why that was not disclosed until now." No serious explanation was offered.

Pratt was convicted of murdering Caroline Olsen and wounding her husband Kenneth Olsen, now deceased, in a 1968 holdup, At the trial, Olsen testified that Pratt was the killer. But the jury was not told that earlier he had identified someone else.

Skeptical of Olsen's value as a witness, the prosecution built its case around Butler. Butler had been expelled from the Panthers in 1969. He then gave a policeman a letter in which he claimed Pratt had confessed to him he had committed the Olsen murder.

When the shooting occurred, Pratt was attending a Panther meeting in northern California. He insisted that with its known tight surveillance of the Panthers, including the tapping of its phones, the FBI could verify he was there and had made phone calls to Los Angeles. The FBI says the pertinent logs are missing.

At the trial, the prosecutor had described Butler's testimony as crucial. He declared, "Julio Butler has testified in this courtroom under oath...to a confession Mr. Pratt made to him .... If the jury believes Mr. Butler, Mr. Pratt is guilty. The case is over."

But in a significant shift at the current hearing, the DA's office tried to take its distance from its discredited informer. Sondheim declared, "The evidence presented at the trial - independent of Butler's testimony - was so overwhelming that the credibility of Julius Butler is of no consequence."

To illustrate how "overwhelming" the evidence, especially the eyewitness evidence, was, Sondheim noted that after a "protracted" trial, the jury reached a verdict in six days. Judge Dickey took exception. He said the jury, which twice reported itself deadlocked, had obviously not found the eyewitness evidence overwhelming.

Dickey also pointed out that an examination of the record shows the trial was far from "protracted." It spanned a month, he said, but the jury was never brought in until late morning or mid-afternoon. Comparing this to normal court schedules, he calculated that the jury was in the courtroom an equivalent of six days. He said the jurors took as long a time to reach a verdict as they had been given to hear the case.

When Sondheim argued that Butler did not perceive of himself as an informer, Dickey again interrupted, declaring that how Butler saw himself was immaterial. What was decisive, he declared is that "the jury should have been given the opportunity to arrive at their own conclusions about him."

Pratt's attorneys, Stuart Hanlon and Johnnie Cochran, summarized the evidence that had emerged at the hearing declaring that the testimony buttressed their motion for a new trial. Hanlon has represented Pratt over the years. Cochran was Pratt's lawyer in the 1972 trial and returned to participate in the hearing.

Concluding the hearing, Dickey indicated he would try to hand down an early decision.  
 
 
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