By Maddogg Guest Writer, T.H. Johnson, of the Ocean Medical Investigative Group

 

As we approach the 24th year since the O.J. Simpson case began with the June 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ron Goldman, we are also approaching other anniversaries that have, in my opinion, more significant consequences.

This, in a nation that has gotten used to being fed and digesting tabloid news with the assumption that it is real, while clandestine actors move continuously to conceal what has actually occurred in this infamous case.

 

This, in a case that several universities have now began to make mandatory class study for entering law school students, the OJ Simpson case and its alleged “trial of the century”.   However, this case conceals other unstudied realities that the record indicates exists in order to promulgate this quarter century false narrative.  The idea or concept of Simpson as the contemporary Othello.  or simply another celebrated Negro, fanatically infatuated with a white woman.

This was enough to allow journalists to fail to examine the alleged hearsay evidence that they were being fed.  However, they were not being force fed because the well seasoned 400 year old sauce of racial taboo made the entre of the negro afflicted with what Spike Lee coined “Jungle Fever” easily digestible.

Hence, after reading the latest, I chuckle at the way Hollywood maneuvers black actors, moving them around to play their roles in its latest minstrel show.  I got a good laugh when they announced in 2017 that Jamie Fox would be playing Geronimo Pratt in an upcoming motion picture about the noted Black Panther Party member who was framed by authorities and sent to prison.    I say this because Foxx became a vocal public criticizer of O.J. Simpson after his trial without studying how the concealment of evidence in the Simpson case, in all probability, was tied to the Pratt case which he’s been chosen to star.   In his comical act, Jamie appeared to go on and on while reaching an emotional crescendo regarding O.J. Simpson, as if he was guilty of a crime.  If he only knew the details of a critical investigation of the evidence that we’ve conducted over the last 22 years maybe Foxx would be better served in the role he has chosen to play.  The Geronimo Pratt case appears to have a link to the O.J. Simpson case, and that link is Johnnie Cochran.  The brilliant black lawyer was somewhat pompous and full of himself when dismissing Pratt’s admonitions of how the clandestine government forces were out to get him.  He attempted to explain it to Cochran but he did not understand as Pratt had alleged.  If Jamie Foxx would read both of Cochran’s books, JOURNEY TO JUSTICE and A LAWYER’S LIFE, I do believe he would arrive at the conclusion that a major subtext of Cochran’s biographies of his life and trials was his feelings of guilt for failing Geronimo Pratt.  The question that we raise based on our investigation of concealed evidence in the Simpson case is whether Cochran needed to retain the knowledge of malfeasance regarding that evidence in that case to free Pratt?  It appeared that Cochran may have used it in a potentially vicious manner as leverage to attain Geronimo Pratt’s freedom.  Of course Foxx would not know this because he only has allowed himself to exposed to superficial information relative to both Pratt and Simpson.  By that I mean he has never attempted to sit down with people that have been in the trenches on both cases, and particular, he hasn’t set down with any of our staff at OMIG (Ocean Medical Investigative Group) to attain an update.  However, he needs to examine this case as thoroughly as he did for the starring role he played in RAY because the impact of what was concealed in the Simpson case has had predictable lethal effects on the African American community due to its racial animus injected into the mainstream of public discourse within our society.

We believe that Johnnie Cochran went along with the false narrative promulgated by those who were attempting to frame Simpson within the justice establishment of L.A. County because we know, as you can see in this clip below, that Cochran went along with concealing the phone records of Simpson’s in laws, the Browns, that changed the time of the final phone call of when his ex-wife, Nicole, was last known to be alive.   Here Cochran is https://youtu.be/Bk3Muy_MgJA.   If Simpson’s wife Nicole was alive at 11 PM as the father, mother, and F.Lee Bailey stated then OJ was entering the backseat of a limousine to LAX to catch an 11:45 PM flight to Chicago.

We believe that Johnnie Cochran held on to that fraudulent information to use as leverage to secure Geronimo Pratt’s release, in all probability, for his final appeal in 1997 from a life w/o parole sentence which had him incarcerated in county jail and prison since 1968. Johnnie never forgot the embarrassment he experienced at the hands of corrupt LA officials and federal agents enacting J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO strategy to frame members of the Black Panther Party at any cost as Pratt told an unbelieving naive Cochran they planned to do to him.

Cochran never lived that down, one gets that drift in his two biographies A LAWYER’S LIFE and JOURNEY TO JUSTICE and the reason that we believe he held the knowledge of those actual hidden phone records over the heads of L.A. officials immediately after the Simpson criminal trial had ended.   Because Johnnie Cochran caustically criticized a sitting judge, Richard Kalustian, in a monthly law journal, California Lawyer,  Pratt’s final appeal swung into a new dimension. Kalustian was the prosecutor that helped the US government frame Pratt in 1972.   After Cochran’s statements were publicized a superior court judge in LA County, Michael Cowell, issued an order recusing himself and the entire Los Angeles County bench from hearing Geronimo Pratt’s appeal.   It was postponed for several more months for both an impatient angry Pratt and his lawyer for the last 25 years Stuart Hanlon.   Hanlon’s wife was dying from terminal cancer and he and Geronimo Pratt after a quarter century of friendship were no longer on good speaking terms, their relationship fracturing.  This was due in part to Hanlon’s family medical crisis but largely it was due to the frustration of the injustice Pratt and Hanlon had unjustly experienced over a quarter century.    Pratt continued to receive unjust ambivalent treatment at the hands of LA County judges on appeal, but Cochran by now was quietly maneuvering behind the scene.  All of this is revealed in  the magnificent biography written by Jack Olsen in his book on Pratt’s life, LAST MAN STANDING.

The final appeal was heard by an Orange County Judge, and ex-Marine Everette Dickey who could give less than a damn about the pressures being placed on him by LA County officials, including Los Angeles DA Gil Garcetti.   When another Orange County based attorney, popular African American legal pundit and civil rights lawyer, Milton Grimes was asked by Pratt lawyer Stuart Hanlon about Dickey’s background, Grimes responded that Everette Dickey “had guts” and though he could be “tough” he opined that Judge Dickey was “ruthlessly fair”.

Though LA DA Gil Garcetti stated that he did not see what merited Pratt’s release from his life sentence, Dickey would in fact free Geronimo Pratt around this time 21 years ago in 1997.   However, within two and a half years Cochran would attain a $2.75 million award for damages from LA County and $1.0 million dollars awarded to Pratt by the FBI since both had participated in the malfeasance of framing an innocent man, Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt.

Pratt was called to the San Francisco Bay area back in 1968 by Panther leaders, Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, at the same time two murders took place in the LA metro’s Santa Monica 400 miles away.  The FBI knowingly concealed video tape and photos taken of Pratt by agents during the time he was in the San Francisco Bay area.   They along with LA prosecutors cleaned up an ex- L.A. Deputy Sheriff, turned street hustler, inserted into the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panthers to instigate cases as a provocateur against their targeted members.  The confidential informant was named Julius Butler that after the government concealed exculpatory evidence in the form of photographs, they used Butler to lie on Pratt in order to frame him and get him out of the picture.   Pratt was a former US Army Infantryman with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze and Silver Star for bravery.  These were the type of individuals that J. Edgar Hoover wanted to target because of their discipline and training potential for other panther members in their struggle against police brutality and injustice.

There is much hidden evidence in the Simpson case, but the phone records as seen here https://youtu.be/rWSyMQb-reg are exculpatory and all sides knew they would have cleared Simpson but concealed them from the jury, including Johnnie Cochran.  Thus, it further makes sense to me that Johnnie Cochran knew he had a malignant tumor long before it was made public in 2003 or 2004.

This became his last effort to fulfill a commitment he’d made to a man who indicated to a young naive lawyer how totally corrupt the justice system in California actually was.   Pratt never lost faith in Cochran and told him when he was being led away “Don’t forget me, Cochran” in 1972. Though it may be hard to believe, the history of Cochran’s involvement with the workings of a corrupt system, and his embarrassment by high officials in both the state and federal government whose intent on framing an innocent man drove Johnnie Cochran for many years.   That is the subtext one takes away from his two books, JOURNEY TO JUSTICE and A LAWYER’S LIFE as he discusses his wives, his family, his inter-racial interactions, his career, etc. The reward of attaining the freedom of geronimo Pratt was probably much greater in importance than the Simpson case would ever be for Cochran and worth more in the end than all of the millions he had made during his career.

Maybe taking his father, Johnnie Cochran Sr’s advice in the late 70s and accepting the offer of LADA John Vanderkamp to work for the DA’s office as the third highest Asst DA, made sense.    I believe it brought Johnnie more knowledge as predicted by Vanderkamp as to how the system actually operated in order for this legal master to ultimately attain, so that now, Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr,  you may R.I.P.

 

T.H. Johnson has been an investigator leading the OMIG investigative team researching the Simpson case for the last 22 years.  He has authored 3 books and produced one documentary below.