Olson’s Attempt to Change Plea Fails

A Superior Court judge Monday refused to let accused Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson withdraw her guilty plea on attempted bombing charges, after a contentious hearing where he accused the longtime fugitive of lying in court.

“I couldn’t for a minute accept a guilty plea from a person who I believed was innocent,” Judge Larry Paul Fidler said after three hours of arguments. “I couldn’t sleep. I intend to sleep well tonight.”

Fidler said Olson’s attorneys failed Monday to prove she was innocent or to provide any defense of handwriting and fingerprint evidence linking Olson to the SLA and the crimes that took place in 1975.

He also blasted defense attorney J. Tony Serra for failing to show up for the critical hearing, which came just days after Serra had filed court papers saying he had coerced his client into pleading guilty.

Olson, 54, who had pleaded guilty at two court sessions before asking to recant her plea, is now due to be sentenced Jan. 18. Under terms of her plea agreement, which was reached in late October, she will be sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. Her lawyers have said they expect she will be behind bars for just more than five years, but Fidler has made it clear at three hearings that the state Board of Prison Terms could force her to serve a far longer sentence.

Olson will remain free on $1-million bail through the holidays, Fidler said. Her co-counsel, Shawn Chapman, said after the hearing that she will decide soon whether to appeal Fidler’s decision refusing to let her go to trial.

Olson, who sighed out loud several times during the session, refused to take the stand to answer questions about her innocence or guilt and later declined to comment outside the courtroom.

The dramatic hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court was filled with accusations, criticisms and insults by prosecutors, Chapman and the judge. Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter called Olson a liar and said she still won’t take responsibility for the planting of bombs under two LAPD cars in an effort to kill officers. Chapman criticized her co-counsel Serra, the district attorney’s office and the judge for placing Olson in a difficult position that resulted in her flip-flops. Fidler accused defense attorneys of disingenuously using the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to win trial continuances. The judge also reprimanded Olson for not being truthful.

“I took that guilty plea essentially twice from Ms. Olson,” Fidler said. “Were you lying to me then or are you lying to me now? She cannot have it both ways.”

“She pled guilty because she is guilty,” the judge concluded as the hearing ended. “The facts show she is guilty. The motion is denied.”

Throughout the day, Olson, born Kathleen Soliah, sat with her arms crossed, occasionally shaking her head. At one point after prosecutors mispronounced her name, she blurted out, “It’s Soliah.” Meanwhile, her three daughters, sitting near the front of the court, tearfully hugged one another several times.

Olson, who was arrested in June 1999 near her St. Paul, Minn., home after more than two decades on the lam, entered a surprise guilty plea Oct. 31. Then she went into the hallway and denied her guilt to reporters, prompting the judge to call her back in Nov. 6 to explain her actions. At that hearing, Olson reaffirmed her plea and admitted her guilt a second time.

A week later, Olson announced that she wanted to withdraw the plea, stating in a court document that she was innocent and only pleaded guilty because she feared jurors wouldn’t treat her fairly following the Sept. 11 attacks.

When Fidler said Monday that Olson would have to answer questions on the witness stand about her statement, she withdrew it.

Chapman argued Monday that Serra had bullied Olson into pleading guilty against her wishes. On both Oct. 31 and Nov. 6, Olson was anguished and reluctant to plead guilty, Chapman said. Chapman said that Serra’s power of persuasion is overwhelming, and that neither she nor Olson could stand up to him. Chapman said that Olson maintained her innocence all along, and that she was continuing to do so Monday.

“He yelled and screamed and demanded that she accept the deal,” Chapman said. “Without pointing a gun to her head, he made her come in here and say what she said. She didn’t want to.”

Fidler called Serra’s absence Monday “absurd, unprofessional and inexcusable.”

Failure to Appear Blamed on ‘Karma’

Later in the day, Serra faxed a letter to the court attributing his failure to appear to his “karma.” He wrote that he missed his morning flight from Oakland and thought there wouldn’t be a seat on the next plane. “Therefore, in a state of mind of dank frustration, I went home and went back to bed,” he wrote.

Serra, who worked on the case for free, had said in court papers that he pressured Olson to make a deal with the district attorney’s office because of the fear she wouldn’t receive a fair trial and because he felt prosecutors had changed their tune on how much time they wanted her to serve.

Fidler said it was ridiculous to argue that Serra coerced Olson to take the plea deal. “Are you claiming that Mr. Serra is some sort of Svengali that could somehow overpower a very intelligent woman’s free will?” he asked Chapman. “I thought we were out of the Dark Ages.”

Fidler added that the Sept. 11 attacks were not germane to the plea because no jurors had yet been questioned on whether they could be fair to Olson.

Chapman also said Serra lied to the judge when he said Olson was guilty under a theory of aiding and abetting. When Fidler asked her if Serra should face disciplinary action with the State Bar, Chapman said she was not recommending such a course, but she reiterated that he had offered “an absolute lie” in court.

Marlin Villa, spokesman for the State Bar, declined to comment Monday on whether Serra could face action for his failure to appear in court or for Chapman’s allegation that he lied.

Chapman also cast blame on prosecutors Hunter and Michael Latin, saying they told Olson they would not push for a life sentence and then changed their minds on the day Olson entered the guilty plea. Both sides recounted different versions of the plea negotiations.

“I never thought they would lie the way they did,” Chapman said. “It’s reprehensible.”

Hunter said the prosecution position has always remained the same--that no decision has yet been made whether to lobby for a life sentence in front of the state Board of Prison Terms.

Hunter scoffed at the defense’s argument that Olson was bullied into pleading guilty, accusing her of using the “girl excuse.”

“We’re not dealing with a child here,” Hunter said. “She’s not going to just sit there and be browbeaten by some man.”

When Olson pleaded guilty, there was no ambiguity and no hesitation, Hunter said. “She can hem and haw . . . and she can be theatrical,” Hunter said. “But when it comes down to it, she looked me in the eye and said, ‘I am guilty.’ ”

Before making his ruling, Fidler asked both sides to present summaries of their cases. He told Chapman that as soon as the guilty plea was entered, the burden of proof shifted to her to prove that Olson was innocent.

Prosecutors presented a multimedia show, complete with slides of photographs, maps and SLA writings, to show Fidler how much evidence they had against Olson and how they planned to link her to the SLA and to the bombing attempts.

They said their key witness would have been newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who was kidnapped by the SLA in 1974 and later wrote in her memoirs that Olson participated in the bombing attempts in Los Angeles. They planned to present fingerprint evidence that showed Olson, a Palmdale native, had access to a closet in a San Francisco safe house where bombs and bomb-making components were held, and handwriting evidence that she ordered fuses.

“The defendant was part of a team of three people who came to Los Angeles to try to murder police officers,” Latin said. “There is no doubt that the officers would have been killed. Their lives were decided by one-sixteenth of an inch.”

Chapman told Fidler that she would have called Olson herself to testify that she helped the SLA by giving them money and renting cars for them, but that she did not take part in the bombing attempts in Los Angeles. Chapman also would have called former SLA members to say that Olson never joined the organization and that she was not in Los Angeles when the bombs were planted. Chapman said she intended to attack Hearst as a liar and a convicted felon.

Chapman said that Olson was one of a number of people on the fringe of the SLA, and that her help did not rise to the level of attempted murder or conspiracy.

Fidler pointed out that most of the defense’s planned witnesses were also convicted felons, and told Chapman he was not convinced.

Times staff writers Steve Berry and Maura Dolan contributed to this report.