Official Says He Can’t Recall Informant’s Role in Pratt Trial

A retired Los Angeles district attorney’s office investigator who kept a confidential informant card on a key witness against former Black Panther Party leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt testified Monday he does not recall whether he was even aware that the informant was a witness at Pratt’s trial.

Clayton R. Anderson, retired chief of the district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, said he was aware that Pratt was being tried for murder in 1972 in a high-profile case. But he said he could not recall whether Pratt’s prosecutors requested any information from him before or during the trial.

At that trial, Julius C. “Julio” Butler testified that the former Panther confessed to fatally shooting a teacher and wounding her husband during a 1968 robbery.

Pratt’s attorneys hope to show that prosecutors knew Butler was an informant but kept that information from the defense. Butler is set to testify as early as today at an Orange County hearing on whether Pratt should get a new trial after nearly 25 years in prison.

Pratt has said he was in Oakland when the murder occurred.