BREAKTHROUGH/page 49
Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt
this incident but this sentence was changed by the warden to two years in isolation, even though the prison later admitted Pratt's involvement was trivial and that he was really trying to save the guard from injury; • Pratt was charged in 1976 by the Marin District Attorney's office for possession of one joint o~ marijuana, a felony, even though hundreds of other inmates are never criminally charged for possession of drugs such as heroin. When Pratt's attorney filed a 30-page Discovery Motion (charging discriminatory prosecution), the case was immediately dismissed; • prison records state Pratt is dangerous because he is a leader of the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and other revolutionary groups, even though all these groups were formed after he was locked up in isolation, and ther~ is no evidence linking him to these groups. ''My husband has been locked up for years in a six by nine foot cell, denied decent exercise, the right to further his education, to learn any trades or work, been denied family visits. I'm glad this part is over. But he is not free yet, and is still harassed by the prison. On his second day on qtainline, he was accused of organizing a strike and lost his job at ~he furniture factory, '' says Ashaki Pratt, wife of Geronimo. The Warden and other officials of San Quentin have been telling the Department of Corrections' officials in Sacramento for over one year th~t Pratt should be moved to a mainline, but not the one at San Quentin, because of his notoriety there. The Sacramento officials have been saying no other prison will take him; the irony. is ~hat the other prisons don't want Pratt because of the false statements and unfounded accusations that exist in Pratt's file. Geronimo is attempting to fight his initial conviction-a first degree murder charge in 1968-through the Federal Courts. Pratt's attorneys in New York have filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the F.B.I. for withholding surveillance records of Pratt. The F .B.I. has already turned over 1600 pages of material on Pratt, much of it deleted and with hundreds of pages withheld. The murder took place on . December 18, 1968 in Los Angeles, at which time Pratt was attending a Black Panther Party meeting in Oakland, and the F.B.I. had surveillance of that meeting. The F.B.I. now maintains that they did not begin surveillance of Pratt until January 1, 1969-coincidentally 12 days after the murder.
Geronimo concludes: ''This move to mainline is only a first step, and it took two years in Court to get this . They won't even give me minimal damages for all those years I was locked. up for nothing. They're still trying to set me up at San Quentin. No victory comes without a fight-and I will continue my fight until I am free.'' 0