Geronimo ji Jaga
Court finally abandons attempt to frame up former Black
Panther
By
Monica Moorehead
Former Black Panther Geronimo ji Jaga (formerly Pratt) won
an important legal battle Feb. 17.The Los Angeles County
district attorney's office said they would not seek a retrial
of ji Jaga for the 1968 murder and robbery of a woman on a
Santa Monica tennis court.
Ji Jaga was convicted in 1972 based on the testimony of a
Los Angeles sheriff's deputy, Julius Butler--an informant who
had infiltrated the Black Panther Party.
At the time of his arrest, ji Jaga said that he had been
attending a Black Panther meeting in Oakland. His defense team
had no idea that Butler had been a paid informant during the
first trial.
Ji Jaga spent 27 years in jail. He spent every painful day
maintaining that he was framed for a crime he did not commit.
Throughout his incarceration, there was always visible mass
support for this political prisoner in and outside the
courtroom.
In 1997 he was released from prison after an Orange County
court of appeals threw out the conviction. The judge ruled that
prosecutors had withheld vital evidence regarding a witness who
could have cleared ji Jaga of the charges.
One of the defense lawyers, Stuart Hanlon, remarked: "It is
very fulfilling to reach this point after all of these years.
But my overwhelming feeling is anger. [District Attorney Gil]
Garcetti fought us every step of the way."
Another factor in the district attorney's decision not to
retry ji Jaga is that his office felt that the sordid history
of the informant and the police officers he worked with would
discredit them in the eyes of any jury.
There can be little doubt that this frame-up and conviction
was tied to the Counter Intelligence Program, or Cointelpro,
masterminded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the
1960s and 1970s.
Infiltrating groups with paid informants was a common FBI
tactic to create distrust and break up unity. Conintelpro, a
counter-revolutionary and terrorist campaign, was instrumental
in undermining the Panthers and other revolutionary formations
fighting for national liberation--especially in the 1960s.
Ever since his release, ji Jaga has been attracting big
crowds of activists--new and seasoned--to spread the message
about the need to struggle against all forms of racist
oppression and to fight for the release of all political
prisoners.
He has become one of the most vocal supporters of the former
Black Panther and award-winning journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Just months after his release, ji Jaga spoke in Philadelphia at
an International Tribunal of 1,500 people to demand the freedom
of Abu-Jamal.
The struggle for justice for ji Jaga is not quite over.
Hanlon and ji Jaga's other lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, are
planning a civil lawsuit on behalf on ji Jaga against the state
of California for taking away 27 precious years of his
life.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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