🚀 go-pugleaf

*   
*   Thirteen years later, in November 1982, District Court Judge John F.
*   Grady determined that there was sufficient evidence of an FBI-led
*   conspiracy to deprive the Panthers of their civil rights, and awarded
*   the plaintiffs $1.85 million in damages.


:   5/30/97 MSNBC
:   
:   After more than a quarter of a century in prison, a Black Panther
:   activist has won the right to a new trial. A judge ruled there had
:   been prosecutorial misconduct. The judge overturned the conviction
:   when it was disclosed the government prosecutors withheld critical
:   evidence:
:   
:       o They never said the informer was working with and paid by
:         the FBI.
:   
:       o A former FBI agent also agrees with his alibi: that he was
:         in the Black Panther HQ at the time of the murder. That the
:         FBI knew this because they were monitoring the HQ.
:   
:       o And the jury never knew the eyewitness, who has since died,
:         had misidentified people in other cases.
:
:   He has been turned down for parole 16 times, and had been in prison
:   longer than most murderers.
:
:
:   6/10/97 MSNBC: Mr. Pratt has been freed over the U.S. Attorney's
:   objections. His first minutes of freedom were spent with his
:   94-year-old mother.
:
:   Court TV:
:
:        Judge Dickey overturned the conviction last month, ruling that
:   prosecutors failed to tell the defense that the key witness against
:   Pratt was an infiltrator and paid informant for the FBI and police.
:   *** This primary "witness" had claimed Pratt confessed!!! ***
:   
:        "It's madness in there," Pratt said after walking out of jail
:   on $25,000 bail. "You have political prisoners on top of political
:   prisoners. I'm only one of a great many that should be exposed,
:   should be addressed."
:
:   The same judge who presided over Pratt's original trial set him free.
:   Johnny Cochran