threatened to indict me for obstruction of justice for refusing to turn over the letter to them. Some time during 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.33
Ibid.
It was this investigation of Rice by the LAPD’s Department of Internal Affairs that led to the opening of the letter. Internal Affairs had actually become suspicious that Rice was subversive and sympathetic to the Panthers because of his relationship with Butler. 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 to—another puzzling attitude for someone who was no more than a “paid informant.”)
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 Butler was on the payroll as an informant for the agency. In the records of the seven FBI interviews with Butler, however, 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 schoolteacher 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: “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 sealed envelope Julius Butler gave to Rice. It was opened at Butler’s request in October 1970–22 months after the murder took place—because, as he put it, the FBI was “jamming” him. 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.”
The appeal that secured Pratt’s release in May 1997 adds only minor details to the original rejected 1980 appeal. It basically cites recent information, voluntarily turned over by prosecutors, which seems to amplify the claim that Butler had some kind of involvement with law enforcement after the sealed envelope was delivered to Sergeant Rice. The principal new claim 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.” There is a record of Butler’s contacts with the FBI following its agents’ observation of the encounter with Sergeant Rice. Butler’s response to agents’ questions was always that he was no longer with the Party and wasn’t able to give them an informed opinion.
But no matter how one parses the language of these reports or interprets “informant card,” none of the evidence brought forward by Cochran in any way alters the picture of Julius Butler’s relations to law enforcement as 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.
Johnnie Cochran has called Julius Butler a “conniving snake” and “liar” and “police informant.” As in the Simpson case, he has had great success with this line of attack before a credulous and ill-informed public and press. Los Angeles Urban League President John Mack was only one of many who swallowed the Cochran line 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 follows the pattern of the Simpson defense: an attack on law enforcement as a racist conspiracy out to “get” his client. A principal problem for Cochran has been the fact that Butler is black, and that until Cochran’s charges he was a responsible and respected member of the community, a lawyer and a church elder. As part of Cochran’s assault on Butler’s character, he has alleged that Butler carried a grudge which was the result of thwarted ambition. Specifically, Cochran claims that when Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, the leader of the Los Angeles Panthers, was killed by a rival gang headed by Ron (Maulana) Karenga in a shoot-out at UCLA a month after the Olsen murder, Pratt rather than Butler was made head of the Party and Butler didn’t forgive him.
Once again, however, the facts do not substantiate the Cochran thesis. If jealousy was the motive, why not go to the police immediately? Why hand over a sealed letter and wait 22 months until long after you have become so disillusioned with the Panthers that your jealousy, if not cooled, has become an irrelevance?
In fact, Butler did not even deposit his insurance letter into the safekeeping of Sergeant Rice immediately after the murder. He did so only after being relieved of his Panther duties in July 1969, and then physically threatened by Pratt and his lieutenants, who were conducting a purge in the Party’s ranks in the wake of the murder of Bunchy Carter. The cause of Butler’s conflict with Pratt was not envy, but a growing concern about the Party’s direction. In the sealed 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.44
Ibid.
The incident that most depressed Butler was the pistol-whipping of a 17-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 reprimanded Butler, telling him this wasn’t the Panther way to deal with suspects. He then relieved Butler of his position in the Party’s security force and placed him under house arrest. At trial, the victim 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 the behavior and guilt of Geronimo Pratt. For it was in examining Butler’s testimony that Huey’s story about the eroticism of violence in Pratt’s psyche resurfaced with riveting force:
Q. Was Ollie Taylor in the room at this time?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay.
A.
