Centurion Ministries

He has tried for parole 12 times--and been denied. Amnesty International has tried to win him a new trial. Political luminaries and even one of the jurors who convicted him say he deserves another chance. But Elmer (Geronimo) Pratt's best hope for freedom may have finally arrived in the person of a crusading clergyman who specializes in exonerating the "convicted innocent."

Former Black Panther Party leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt's case did not fit the mold of those the Rev. Jim McCloskey takes on. Pratt was a public figure whose case had attracted any number of high-profile supporters over the years. McCloskey's Princeton, N.J.-based Centurion Ministries specializes in helping what he calls anonymous prisoners he is convinced are innocent, "those who have no voice. They are just buried alive in prison."

Seventeen years ago, Clarence Chance and Benny Powell were convicted of murdering a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy and carted off to prison to serve life sentences. Now, they are on the verge of being freed--not because their time is up, but because authorities are no longer convinced that they committed the crime.

He has tried for parole 12 times--and been denied. Amnesty International has tried to win him a new trial. Political luminaries and even one of the jurors who convicted him say he deserves another chance. But Elmer (Geronimo) Pratt's best hope for freedom may have finally arrived in the person of a crusading clergyman who specializes in exonerating the "convicted innocent."

Former Black Panther Party leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt's case did not fit the mold of those the Rev. Jim McCloskey takes on. Pratt was a public figure whose case had attracted any number of high-profile supporters over the years. McCloskey's Princeton, N.J.-based Centurion Ministries specializes in helping what he calls anonymous prisoners he is convinced are innocent, "those who have no voice. They are just buried alive in prison."

Clarence Chance and Benny Powell walked into Los Angeles County Superior Court as handcuffed prisoners Wednesday and left as free men--released by a judge after spending 17 years behind bars for a murder that the district attorney is no longer convinced they committed. The dramatic ruling by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper capped an extraordinary series of events for Chance and Powell, who were convicted in 1975 of killing a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy two years earlier.

IN THE BASEMENT OF AN OFFICE building across the street from Princeton University, an iconoclastic Protestant minister is patiently searching through a box of files on a 17-year-old Los Angeles murder case. The case was solved long ago to the satisfaction of the police and the courts. Two men were convicted and are serving life terms. But James McCloskey, the only full-time operative of Centurion Ministries, and not incidentally one of the nation's best detectives, thinks they are the wrong men.

NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE HOW MANY wrongful convictions occur each year. In a recent survey by C. Ronald Huff, director of the criminal justice research center at Ohio State University, more than two-thirds of the lawyers, judges and law-enforcement officials asked said they believed that the error rate for convictions is less than 1%. A mistake rate even that high would result in 6,000 wrongful felony convictions a year in the United States. Francis J.

Every few months there's another news story: A prison inmate, sometimes one behind bars for decades, is released when a reexamination of the case shows he was wrongfully convicted. Sometimes there's new evidence that police were corrupt or that forensic scientists made mistakes. Sometimes, DNA tests bring exoneration. Sometimes incompetence by defense lawyers is proved. Whatever the reason, a growing number of wrongly convicted inmates are being released. What then?

A man who spent nearly 25 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit lost a civil rights lawsuit this week that accused a former detective of misconduct in his criminal case. A federal jury on Monday unanimously rejected Willie Earl Green's claim that an LAPD detective violated his civil rights during an investigation that led to Green's conviction for the 1983 slaying of a woman at a crack house in South Los Angeles. "I feel like the system let me down again," Green said in response to the verdict.

Clarence Chance and Benny Powell walked into Los Angeles County Superior Court as handcuffed prisoners Wednesday and left as free men--released by a judge after spending 17 years behind bars for a murder that the district attorney is no longer convinced they committed. The dramatic ruling by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper capped an extraordinary series of events for Chance and Powell, who were convicted in 1975 of killing a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy two years earlier.

Seventeen years ago, Clarence Chance and Benny Powell were convicted of murdering a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy and carted off to prison to serve life sentences. Now, they are on the verge of being freed--not because their time is up, but because authorities are no longer convinced that they committed the crime.

NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE HOW MANY wrongful convictions occur each year. In a recent survey by C. Ronald Huff, director of the criminal justice research center at Ohio State University, more than two-thirds of the lawyers, judges and law-enforcement officials asked said they believed that the error rate for convictions is less than 1%. A mistake rate even that high would result in 6,000 wrongful felony convictions a year in the United States. Francis J.

IN THE BASEMENT OF AN OFFICE building across the street from Princeton University, an iconoclastic Protestant minister is patiently searching through a box of files on a 17-year-old Los Angeles murder case. The case was solved long ago to the satisfaction of the police and the courts. Two men were convicted and are serving life terms. But James McCloskey, the only full-time operative of Centurion Ministries, and not incidentally one of the nation's best detectives, thinks they are the wrong men.

A Los Angeles judge on Monday overturned the conviction of a man who has spent the last quarter-century in prison for a murder he insists he did not commit, concluding that the prosecution's star witness lied. The ruling comes after the witness recently recanted his testimony and could lead to freedom for Willie Earl Green, a former chauffeur who was sentenced to 33 years to life in a 1983 execution-style slaying at a South Los Angeles crack house.

Hoping to increase public pressure for a new trial for Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, supporters of the imprisoned former Black Panther Party leader unveiled a billboard Monday on Century Boulevard asking how long a man they see as innocent must wait for justice. Pratt, who has been behind bars for 26 years, is serving a life sentence for murdering a schoolteacher and wounding her husband during a 1968 robbery that netted $18 on a Santa Monica tennis court.