Elmer G. "Geronimo" Pratt, the former Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader who spent 27 years in prison before his 1972 murder conviction was overturned, died today in a small village in Tanzania. The late lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. called getting Pratt out of jail the most important case of his career. Pratt long maintained that the FBI knew he was innocent because the agency had him under surveillance in Oakland when the slaying was committed in Santa Monica, says the L.A. Times.
Blast from the past: Cochran discussing the case on CNN with Greta Van Susteren and Roger Cossack.