News

The Dilemma of Sara Jane Olson

Continued from page 2

"The [L.A.] district attorney said that if Sara cooperated, the prosecution would disappear," Hanlon recounted. In a decision that may now seem horribly and ironically wrongheaded, Olson, charged with conspiring to commit murder, possession of a destructive device, and attempted explosion of a destructive device with intent to murder, resolved to take her chances with a jury. In October 1999, the district attorney upped the stakes by broadening the scope of the trial to include the entire history of the SLA and evidence related to two dozen uncharged criminal acts. It is this horrific history of terrorism that Hanlon, Serra, and the third, much younger member of the legal team, Shawn Chapman, must obscure or distance Olson from if she is to be kept from prison.

According to its trial brief, the prosecution intends to show that "violence was the group's calling card. ... [T]hose who enlisted in the SLA, rather than in other radical political organizations, deliberately chose violence as their weapon for revolution ... chose to part ways with their radical counterparts who were trying to effect change through public speeches, demonstrations, protests, and even attention-getting acts of property destruction."

To date, the prosecution has produced 40,000 items of physical evidence and 23,000 pages of documentary evidence. Blood-encrusted, bullet-punctured clothing will be on display, along with "gunpowder, wire, nails, screws, pipe, end caps, batteries, blasting cap, [and] pipe bombs" seized from Olson's Bernal Heights apartment a quarter-century ago. Prosecutors say they have handwriting evidence showing that Olson ordered bomb-making materials two weeks before the attempted bombing in Los Angeles. A gun was found in the house. According to expert testimony before a grand jury in 1976, Olson's fingerprints were on two gun manuals extracted from the house.

The statute of limitations has run out on all as-yet-uncharged SLA crimes except one: the murder of Opsahl at the Crocker National Bank. Prosecutors have subpoenaed Hearst, who has been granted immunity from prosecution in the Opsahl case in return for her testimony. (Hearst was convicted of robbing the Hibernia Bank. President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence in 1978. In January, President Bill Clinton pardoned her.) Prosecutors want the heiress to place Olson in Los Angeles on Aug. 21, 1975, and also inside the Crocker National Bank in April. If a Los Angeles jury believes Olson helped rob the bank, they might not be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt on the attempted bombing of the police cars. (Through her attorney, George C. Martinez, Hearst declined comment for this story.) And if a jury believes Hearst's testimony, the prosecution's piles of physical (if circumstantial) evidence can be used to corroborate the heiress' story.

Given the nature of a conspiracy charge, it is not necessary that the prosecution prove that Olson planted the bombs, or even that she was in L.A. when they were planted. All the prosecutors must do is convince a jury that she was part of a grand conspiracy that intended, among other things, to blow up the police cars. The prosecution argues in its trial brief that the attempted L.A. bombings were part of a broader conspiracy -- to overthrow the U.S. government.

Conspiracy law dictates that if Olson had knowledge of the plot and failed to stop or report it, she is as culpable as is whoever carefully attached the deadly pipes and clothespin triggers to the undercarriage of the police cars with magnets and fishing line.

Whenever the trial does commence, the defense will counter with the argument that, while Olson may have had certain political beliefs, the evidence does not physically link her to the bombs in Los Angeles, and, therefore, she is innocent of the charges of possessing explosives and conspiring to commit murder. The lawyers insist that Olson does not uphold the "ideology" of the SLA, even though she helped the organization. She was, they say, simply a well-intentioned person caught up in the tenor and turbulence of the times.

Although he does not condone the philosophy of the SLA, Hanlon said that the members of the Olson defense team understand why the SLA did what it did: The group was enraged at the violent acts of the U.S. government at home and abroad. Hanlon said the context of Olson's involvement with the SLA will be at center stage in her trial, and showing that involvement in a positive light will be a focus of the defense.

"The SLA was fucked up on many levels. It was the first group of [leftist] white people to commit real terrorist acts. They were crucified for that," he said. "Killing Marcus Foster was outrageous, of course. Killing Opsahl during the Carmichael robbery was a horrendous act; it grabs people in the gut. Although there is no evidence that the SLA did it, Olson is getting the backlash.

"The SLA did stupid and bad things; but it was not OK -- it was cowardly -- for the LAPD to execute them by burning them alive. Sara spoke out and helped the remaining people stay alive. Sara and the SLA wanted to change the world and make it a better place."

At least, that is what the lawyer said before terrorists hijacked four airliners and turned them into flying bombs, running one into the World Trade Center on live television.

J. Tony Serra is a San Francisco legend. Born into a working-class family in the Mission District 67 years ago, Serra majored in philosophy at Stanford University before expatriating himself to Morocco. Instead of becoming a romantic poet -- his heart's desire -- he fell in with heroin addicts, eventually returning to the Bay Area and entering law school at the University of California at Berkeley. As the '60s dawned, he threw himself into radical lawyering and the hippie drug culture.

Serra is famous for his skill in cross-examining witnesses. In a recent interview, he said that his specialty is "parachuting" into a felony murder case after most of the pretrial work has been done by other lawyers. Serra thinks his success at trial stems, in part, from the convincing passion of his closing statements. He is just as passionate about his personal beliefs.

"Going to law school was a cop-out, but luckily the '60s blossomed with the Black Panthers and the White Panthers, the SLA, the prison groups -- I represented all of them. I became a Haight-Ashbury image: I was a dance freak, I dropped acid, I identified with the hippies and the Berkeley radicals," Serra said.

"The hippies had the drugs and the dancing and the beautiful, beautiful lifestyle -- "make love not war.' The radicals were disciplined, academic, not very much fun. But, you know, hoping to change things and make them better."

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
Next Page »