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 bull shit, and 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. . . . (emphasis added)55
Ibid.
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 didn’t need to be finished. Here were two different figures, both close to Pratt but otherwise far separated by distance, status, and motivation, who remarked on the erotic charge that violence had for him.
Despite the persuasive evidence of Pratt’s guilt as contained in the sealed letter, and despite the persuasive evidence in the handling of the letter showing that Butler was not part of a police or FBI conspiracy to frame Pratt, Cochran’s conspiracy theory prevailed. On May 29, 1997, Judge Dickey granted Pratt a new trial and immediate release from his current confinement. 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.
Reading Judge Dickey’s opinion is a depressing experience for anyone concerned about American justice. The salient reason cited 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.” On the evidence provided in the court records, this statement by the Judge is misleading and irrelevant. Julius Butler had absolutely no contact with the FBI or law enforcement prior to his delivery of the sealed letter to Sgt. Rice on August 10, 1969, seven months after the murder and less than two years before the trial. The letter’s identification of Pratt as the killer of Caroline Olsen was available to the jury and was a centerpiece of the court proceeding, a fact 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 a 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 is entirely consistent with the information contained in the incriminating letter and with his behavior throughout the case.
Why didn’t justice prevail in this matter? Why was a murderer set free? The answer lies in the tenor of the times, in which the testimony of officers of the law has become more readily impeachable than the testimony of criminals. As in the O.J. Simpson trial, the appeals process in the Pratt case was turned by Johnnie Cochran into a class action libel against the FBI, the police, the prosecution and its chief witness. And as in the Simpson case, Johnnie Cochran’s fictional melodrama won out over the politically incorrect truth.
September 1, 1997, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=22335.
1 In Re Pratt, Docket No. 37534, Court of Appeals of California, Second District, Division One, Leagle, December 3, 1980, http://www.leagle.com/decision/1980907112CalApp3d795_1840.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
When “Civil Rights” Become Civil Wrongs
During the darkest days of the Cold War, the Italian writer Ignazio Silone predicted the final struggle would be between the communist believers and the ex-believers. A similar conflict seems to be shaping up among civil rights activists. Last month, Jesse Jackson chose the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous 1963 March on Washington to lead a march across the Golden Gate Bridge against California’s Proposition 209. Passed last year, Prop. 209 prohibits race-based hiring and recruiting in government jobs and state colleges. Jackson’s symbolism was clear: support for race-based regulations is now the focus of the civil rights cause.
One immediate problem for this stance is that the architect and principal spokesman for Prop. 209, Ward Connerly, is also a veteran of King’s movement. It is no mere coincidence that Connerly’s measure is called “The California Civil Rights Initiative,” or that its text is carefully constructed to conform to both the letter and spirit of the landmark Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.
The split in the ranks of civil rights veterans is over conflicting assessments of the movement’s success. How much racial progress has been made since the federal government embraced the civil rights agenda? What is the best way to overcome the racial inequalities that still persist? For the anti-209 marchers, little has changed. Whatever gains blacks have made have been limited and have been forced upon recalcitrant whites. Without greater government efforts, existing inequalities will morph into new injustices as bad as before. Making government race-neutral, as the pro-209ers propose, would encourage historic prejudice to reassert itself in all its malignity. Eliminating affirmative action, both Jesse Jackson and President Clinton have warned, is to invite the “re-segregation” of American life.
Yet consider these unruly facts comparing social advances made by African-Americans before and after affirmative action policies were put in place:
In 1940, 87 percent of American blacks lived below the poverty line. By 1960, five years before the Civil Rights acts and 10 years before the first affirmative action policies, the figure was down to 47 percent. That was a greater and more rapid decline than took place over the next 35 years, when the black poverty rate came down to 26 percent. In 1940, only 5 percent of black men and 6.4 percent of black women were in middle-class occupations. By 1970, the figures were 22 percent for black men and 36 percent for black women, larger again than the increases that took place in the 20 years after affirmative action was put in place, when the figures reached 32 percent and 59 percent respectively.
These figures come from a new scholarly work, America in Black and White, by two civil rights veterans, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, who have reconstructed the history of racial progress and conflict in the postwar era and examined the impact of affirmative action solutions. Black poverty, the Thernstroms show, has little to do with race, and its solution will not be affected by affirmative action set-asides. Such policies have had the net effect not of employing greater numbers
