The Dilemma of Sara Jane Olson

"I was a lawyer member of Students for a Democratic Society [a radical group active in the anti-Vietnam War movement]," he said. "I still believe the major problem is an overbearing government that fucks with people's rights if they believe the "wrong' things. The government is racist and sexist and against poor people."

Hanlon seemed to lose the thread of conversation for a minute -- muttering about the dilemma of believing in rent control and, at the same time, being a landlord in San Francisco -- then refocused: "We live in a time when there is not much of a leftist movement. You can still be prosecuted for expressing politics outside the norms of the Democratic or Republican parties. Look at what happens to anti-fur activists protesting at Nordstrom's, or to the youth at the anti-globalization demonstrations."

Hanlon's implication, boiled down to basics, ran on this line: If protesting peacefully in the new century is certainly no guarantee of not being clobbered by the police, people whose form of protest is, or was, more extreme are not likely to be forgiven by the government without the exaction of a pound of flesh.

During the years that Olson was a fugitive, her representatives tried, periodically, to negotiate a deal in which she would surrender and plead guilty to a charge or charges, but not go to prison. When she was finally caught, a deal was proffered, Hanlon said.

"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.