Testimony in Olson Case Is Taken Early

In an unexpected move, attorneys in the case of alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson met Friday in the Sacramento area to take testimony from an ailing witness.

A judge ruled in July that prosecutors could examine three elderly witnesses with histories of illness more than a month before the conspiracy trial begins. That testimony is scheduled for Friday in a Sacramento courthouse, but the prosecution requested that the judge move up the testimony of 77-year-old Dorothy White.

White, who is not hospitalized now but was in April, “is quite ill,” according to Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. “She has a severe heart condition. She’s left orders that she not be resuscitated.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor J. Hunter, Olson’s defense attorney Shawn Chapman, and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler interviewed White in her trailer home Friday afternoon, according to Kyle Christopherson, assistant public information officer for the Los Angeles Superior Court.

The conditional examination--allowed when a witness is infirm or over 70 and unlikely to be able to attend trial--was not open to the public. “Given her ailing health and the fact that it was going to be in her home, [the judge] ordered it closed,” said Christopherson.

The other two witnesses are still expected to be examined in open court Friday in Sacramento.

Olson, 54, was in hiding more than two decades before being found in 1999 and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and possession of explosive devices.

The trial, scheduled to start Sept. 24 in Los Angeles, focuses on whether Olson tried to kill two Los Angeles police officers by planting bombs under two police cars. (The bombs did not explode.)

The three elderly witnesses are expected to supply first-hand accounts of two 1975 bank robberies, allegedly committed by the SLA, in the Sacramento area. One robbery, in the suburb of Carmichael, ended in the shooting death of a customer.

White was expected to testify that she saw a man, whom she identified in 1975 as James Kilgore--Olson’s former boyfriend--outside the other bank, the Guild Savings and Loan in Sacramento, just before that robbery, according to court papers filed in May.

Prosecutors contend that evidence showing the SLA committed the two Sacramento-area robberies is relevant to their case against Olson. Prosecutors believe the money stolen from the Carmichael bank helped finance the bomb materials Olson allegedly used.

Chapman maintains that the robberies are irrelevant. Olson has never been charged in connection with the bank robberies. However, the Carmichael robbery is being investigated anew by the FBI and Sacramento authorities.

The remaining witnesses, Marceline Jones, 80, and Evelyn Burns, 78, are expected to offer testimony about the Carmichael robbery.