'Geronimo' Pratt, 63, former Black Panther

LOS ANGELES -- Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Black Panther Party leader who spent 27 years in prison on a California murder conviction that was later overturned, died Friday in his adopted home of Tanzania. He was 63.

Pratt died at home in Imbaseni village, where he had lived for at least half a decade, said former Black Panther Pete O'Neal.

Pratt's name and his long-fought case with its political backdrop became emblematic of a tumultuous era in American history when the beret-wearing Panthers raised their fists in defiance and carried big guns, striking fear in white America.

The party, founded by Huey Newton in Oakland, Calif., in 1966, was targeted by late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in a program that sent infiltrators into their gatherings and recruited informants. One of them, Julius Butler, was the key witness against Pratt when he was charged in 1968 with the fatal shooting of schoolteacher Caroline Olson on a Santa Monica tennis court.

Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said he was innocent and maintained there were audiotapes that would prove he had been at a Black Panther meeting in Oakland the day of the killing. His lawyers later said that FBI agents and police hid and possibly destroyed wiretap evidence from the meeting, which they had under surveillance.

His conviction in 1972 came amid turmoil marked by shootouts between police and Black Panthers, and the trial of activist professor Angela Davis, who was accused of providing guns for Panthers in a Marin County, Calif., courthouse shooting. She was acquitted of murder charges.

The Panthers were associated with violence, but they also established free breakfast programs for poor children, as well as health clinics and pest-control services. It was their high-profile appearances bearing rifles -- often licensed and legal -- and gun battles with police, which took lives on both sides, that fueled their legend.

For years, Pratt supporters, including well-known civil rights activists, pressed for his release to no avail. But two lawyers, Stuart Hanlon and Johnnie L. Cochran, were relentless in pursuing the case.

In 1997, Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey granted him a new trial, saying the credibility of prosecution witness Butler could have been undermined if the jury had known of his relationship with law enforcement. Pratt was freed soon after.

Cochran, best known for representing O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson, called the day Pratt's freedom was secured "the happiest day of my life practicing law." Prosecutors announced two years later that they would abandon efforts to retry Pratt. He settled a false-imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and city of Los Angeles for $4.5 million in 2000.