A crowd of more than 200 packed a small UCLA School of Law
lecture hall Thursday afternoon to hear Johnnie Cochran talk about
something other than a bloody glove or a white Bronco.
Cochran was also invited to speak at a fundraiser for the Center
for African American Studies Thursday evening, but prefaced that
talk with a discussion at the law school about the social
responsibility of lawyers.
Cochran focused on the need for lawyers to challenge the status
quo and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
“Law is about rendering service,” he said.
He talked about the case of Geronimo Pratt, the leader of the
Black Panthers who was wrongfully convicted of the “Santa
Monica tennis court murder.”
In 1972, Pratt was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison,
including eight years in solitary confinement, for the murder of a
grade school teacher. Cochran was his attorney.
He vowed to never abandon Pratt’s case, and 25 years
later, Cochran won an appeal and freed Pratt on the basis that one
of the prosecution’s witnesses was being paid for
information.
Cochran said that even in a case like this, where his opponent
was the government, lawyers can fight to positively impact
society.
“You can make a difference, even against the largest
opponent you can possibly think of,” he said.
UCLA students are among the best and brightest in the nation,
and should use those gifts to help the needy, he said.
“All of you are sitting or standing on the shoulders of
someone who paid for you,” he said.
Today Americans no longer face the obvious problems of racial
profiling, but the United States is still a society afflicted by
discrimination, Cochran said.
“Jim Crow is dead, but Jim Crow Jr. is very much
alive,” he said.
Defense attorneys help to stop discrimination by placing checks
and balances on the whole judicial system, from police officers to
judges, Cochran said.
“If you don’t have any public defenders, the whole
system will fall apart,” he said.
During his education at Los Angeles High School, Cochran said he
learned the importance of being competitive.
“It made me understand if I worked hard, it didn’t
matter what my race was,” he said.
Cochran graduated from UCLA with a bachelor of arts in 1959. He
later attended Loyola Law School to earn his juris doctor
degree.
In the middle of Cochran’s career, he returned to UCLA to
teach law.
Cochran encouraged young lawyers to find someone they respect,
and view the law as that role model does. For Cochran, the source
of inspiration came from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall.
“I would ask myself, “˜what would Thurgood
do?'” he said.