IV
103D CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. RES. 392
Expressing the sense of the House that the Governor of the State of Califor-
nia, or the California Board of Prison Terms, or both, should take
actions within their power to bring about the reconsideration of the
1972 conviction and/or the immediate release from prison of Elmer
‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt, and that the Judiciary Committee should inquire
into the information known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
which was not released to the California Attorney General and courts
in 1980.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 17, 1994
Mr. DELLUMS submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House that the Governor of
the State of California, or the California Board of Prison
Terms, or both, should take actions within their power
to bring about the reconsideration of the 1972 conviction
and/or the immediate release from prison of Elmer ‘‘Ge-
ronimo’’ Pratt, and that the Judiciary Committee should
inquire into the information known to the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation, which was not released to the
California Attorney General and courts in 1980.
Whereas Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt, a former Black Panther
Party leader in Southern California, was convicted and
HRES 392 IH
sentenced to life in prison in 1972 for murder, assault,
and robbery;
Whereas Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt maintains he did not com-
mit these crimes and asserts his innocence would be prov-
en through the release of the Federal Bureau of Inves-
tigation surveillance records;
Whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in ille-
gal and unconstitutional conduct in an effort to neutral-
ize and destroy the Black Panther Party and its leader-
ship, including Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt;
Wheras the Federal Bureau of Investigation actively sought
to bring about the arrest and conviction of Elmer ‘‘Ge-
ronimo’’ Pratt and other Black Panther Party leaders
through its counterintelligence program (commonly re-
ferred to as ‘‘COINTELPRO’’), in order to achieve its
purpose of disrupting the Black Panther Party, whether
or not facts existed to substantiate the charges made;
Whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation withheld evi-
dence from the prosecutor, police, Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’
Pratt, his attorneys and the jury at this trial, and know-
ingly allowed their informant Julius Butler, informant
numbered 170–1259 to deny that he was an informant
or had ever worked for the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion at Pratt’s trial, and by so doing effectively denied
him his fundamental constitutional right to a fair trial,
in violation of the guarantees of due process and the
equal protection of the laws;
Whereas Federal Bureau of Investigation wrongdoing in the
case of Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt has been established
through exhaustive examination of thousands of pages of
official Federal Bureau of Investigation documents ob-
HRES 392 IH
tained under the Freedom of Information Act and subse-
quently corroborated by the sworn testimony of a retired
Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who has
personal knowledge of that wrongdoing;
Whereas Amnesty International, the London based human
rights organization, after undertaking a thorough review
of the evidence in the case of Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt,
concluded that ‘‘COINTELPRO’’ involved abuses of the
criminal justice system and that ‘‘there were signs of
misconduct by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the
handling of (Pratt’s) case’’;
Whereas Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt has spent over eighteen
years in prison pursuant to his arrest and conviction for
a State offense accomplished without disclosure to the
prosecutor, court, jury and Pratt and his counsel of the
fact that he was targeted by the Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation’s ‘‘COINTELPRO’’ program, and that the
primary witness against him was a ‘‘COINTELPRO’’ in-
formant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and
Whereas it is appropriate to rectify the gross injustice before
doing so would be reduced to a meaningless posthumous
gesture: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House that—
(1) Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt, convicted of mur-
der, assault, and robbery charges in a California
State court in 1972, did not receive a fair trial be-
cause of secret Federal Bureau of Investigation ef-
forts to discredit Elmer ‘‘Geronimo’’ Pratt, by the
dissemination of false information about him and