The Dilemma of Sara Jane Olson

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."

Serra's North Beach office is decorated with the memorabilia of a lifetime, including a fading poster of a seven-headed cobra, the SLA logo. The aging hippie wears his white locks long. He giggled while brandishing a prescription card that entitles him to buy marijuana for medical use, even though, he said, he is not ill.

Serra is not a frivolous person, though. He once served six months in federal prison for being a tax resister. He is a good man to have on your side if you are in deep trouble with the law. The actor James Woods played him in the 1989 film True Believer, about a tricky murder case in San Francisco that Serra and Hanlon won.

"The Olson case is the last large criminal trial of the '60s; part of my destiny," Serra said. "What's sad about it is that the SLA doesn't represent the '60s, they weren't popular."

Admitting that Olson was intimately associated with the SLA, Serra contended the prosecution is using this fact to inflame the jury against her. Then he grinned, sharklike.

"I anticipate cross-examining Patricia Hearst with great relish," he said. "She's filled with contradiction, filled with self-motivation. She's under the domination of law enforcement. She seeks always to be approved by [male] authority images. That's her personality defect, which borders on a psychiatric condition."

Serra went on to denounce the misuse of state and federal conspiracy laws designed to trap the "Mr. Bigs" of drug dealing and other organized crime. People do not realize, he mused, that these same laws can be used for political ends, for repression of people's rights.

"Conspiracy charges are on the rise. In the last 25 years, law enforcement in this country has grown extremely powerful. We have more secret police than the KGB in Russia. We have a sea of informants out there: reliable informants, confidential informants, participatory informants, percipient informants, material informants, leniency informants, paid informants, arrested informants, sources-of-information informants, anonymous informants. We may be moving toward a totalitarian state."

Serra's sonorous voice bounced off the walls.

"Our basic freedoms have shrunk as a consequence of the strength of law enforcement, and therefore, this is a case that they will never give up. They want to fry her. She represents the SLA, and the SLA represented domestic terrorism, and terrorism is the emotional logo behind which law enforcement gains resources and power."