5th Delay in Olson Trial Is Denied

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Friday refused a defense request to delay the trial of Sara Jane Olson, the alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member accused of conspiring to bomb two Los Angeles police cars in 1975.

Judge Larry Paul Fidler ruled that a fifth continuance in the complex case was unnecessary, clearing the way for the trial to begin April 30.

Defense lawyers had complained that they were overwhelmed by the amount of evidence released by prosecutors in recent weeks. They said they needed more time to prepare for the trial, which is expected to last six months and delve into the entire history of the SLA.

But prosecutors said the evidence has been available for months.

Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, is accused of placing bombs under two LAPD squad cars while she was a member of the radical group. The bombs did not detonate.

The 54-year-old homemaker was arrested in July 1999 in St. Paul, Minn., on an outstanding warrant issued two decades earlier after she was indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury. She had changed her name, married a doctor and raised three daughters.

Olson, who says that she was never a member of the SLA, just a sympathizer, is free on $1 million bail. She faces life in prison if convicted.

Her trial was initially set to begin in January 2000.

In denying the request for a five-month delay, Fidler said he believes the defense should be ready for the trial to start at the end of the month.

Olson, who has been declared indigent, was allowed in December to hire two additional attorneys to help attorneys Shawn Chapman and Tony Serra prepare her defense. Although Olson’s husband makes more than $200,000 a year as an emergency room doctor, the couple have been financially ruined by her arrest, according to the defense.

So far, Los Angeles County’s professional appointee court expenditure, a constitutionally mandated account used to defend indigent defendants, has paid more than $430,000 in legal bills for Olson. The amount that the county district attorney’s office has spent to prosecute her was unavailable.

“You have a staff almost greater than any defendant in the county gets,” Fidler said.

The judge said the first four weeks of the trial will be consumed by evidentiary hearings, which would give Olson’s defense additional time to prepare. During those hearings, Olson’s attorneys plan to challenge the use of handwriting evidence and items found in various searches of SLA safe houses and automobiles that could link Olson to the group.

Fidler said the process of picking 24 jurors, 12 of whom would serve as alternates, would begin in late May or early June.

Chapman and Serra sought the delay after complaining that the district attorney’s office has been slow in turning over evidence. In the last eight weeks, Chapman said, she has received 8,000 pages of evidence, most of it unorganized.

She said the amount of evidence, gleaned from law enforcement files all over California, is overwhelming. She said she has been working six to seven days a week and has only been able to read about half of it. “I am doing everything I possibly can. I am not embellishing. I am not spinning,” Chapman said. “I cannot represent my client in a case this serious, in which she’s facing life in prison, without being ready.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter argued that many of the items given to the defense in recent weeks are duplicates of items previously disclosed. She also said the evidence was available to defense lawyers for months but they never bothered to look at it.

Fidler also indicated Friday that he will approve a request by Court TV and a documentary filmmaker to record the trial, although he plans to set strict guidelines, according to Kyle Christopherson, a court representative.

Fidler will allow three video cameras in designated areas of the courtroom, Christopherson said. However, the cameras must be installed without any wires showing and must be stationary.