Prosecutors Seek to Rebut Key Pratt Witness

SANTA ANA —  Prosecutors opposing a new trial for imprisoned former Black Panther leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt called a private attorney as a witness Wednesday to contradict earlier testimony by an investigator from their own office.

Attorney William Flanagan testified that a Los Angeles district attorney’s investigator’s report of an interview with Julius C. “Julio” Butler incorrectly stated that Butler admitted being a paid informant for law enforcement.

In his report of an interview with Butler, 64, on May 17 of last year, district attorney’s investigator Steve De Prima wrote: “When Butler was asked if he had ever been paid as an informant for any law enforcement agency, he replied, ‘Yes.’ ”

Butler, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and an ex-Panther, also said he was either given a gun or money to buy one by someone in the district attorney’s office, according to De Prima’s report.

That report, turned over to Pratt’s attorneys last summer, gave added momentum to Pratt’s efforts to have his murder conviction overturned.

Pratt’s attorneys had long maintained that Butler had been an informant for the FBI and Los Angeles police. District attorney’s investigators also found Butler’s name in a file of their own confidential informants.

Butler testified at Pratt’s trial in 1972 that Pratt told him he had shot schoolteacher Caroline Olsen to death and critically wounded her husband during a robbery on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968.

Butler also testified that he had never been an informant for law enforcement. FBI documents released seven years later reveal Butler had been providing information to FBI agents for more that two years before Pratt’s trial.

Pratt, 49, has maintained his innocence, saying he was in the Bay Area when Olsen was killed.

In his testimony Wednesday, Flanagan, who was present when De Prima interviewed Butler, said it was “very clear” Butler was not admitting being paid as an informant when he spoke to De Prima.

De Prima, who testified last week, said there was no doubt in his mind that he had asked Butler if he had been paid as an informant.

He said Harry Sondheim and Brentford Ferreira, the prosecutors handling Pratt’s hearing, were also at his interview with Butler, but they felt Butler had not admitted being a paid informant.

De Prima said neither prosecutor ever asked him to correct his report to reflect their memory of the question.