Hearst Pardon to Have Little Impact on SLA Trial

Although newspaper heiress Patty Hearst is expected to be a key prosecution witness at the upcoming trial of alleged former SLA member Sara Jane Olson, her recent presidential pardon for her bank robbery conviction will have little impact on the case, legal experts say.

Under state evidentiary laws, the defense probably will be barred from using her conviction on a federal bank robbery charge to impeach Hearst in Olson’s trial, but her criminal history is so well known that it will be impossible to keep it secret at the trial, scheduled to begin April 30.

And despite the federal pardon, Hearst still has a criminal record in state court. She pleaded no contest to felony assault and robbery for a shootout at Mel’s, a sporting-goods store in Los Angeles.

Olson, who was arrested in July 1999 in St. Paul, Minn., after being in hiding for 24 years, is standing trial in Los Angeles Superior Court on charges that she conspired to kill two Los Angeles police officers in 1975 by placing bombs under two squad cars while she was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army. The bombs did not detonate.

“Pretending no one will know about the [bank robbery] conviction is kind of like trying to say, ‘O.J. Simpson never went on trial,’ ” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

“Jurors who have been on the planet for the last 25 years are going to have some idea about why she is famous. Someone in that jury room is going to know the background of Patty Hearst.”

Hearst, who was kidnapped in 1974 by the SLA, was convicted in 1976 of robbing the Hibernia Bank with the 1970s revolutionary group. The bank robbery, in which surveillance photos showed Hearst with a semiautomatic carbine, was highly publicized and seen by many as proof that Hearst had joined her captives’ violent rampage.

Hearst was sentenced to seven years in federal prison but served two years. She was sentenced to five years probation for the Mel’s shootout.

President Jimmy Carter commuted her bank robbery sentence in 1979, agreeing with Hearst’s claims that she was forced to rob the bank because of brainwashing and fear.

Carter’s commutation, which was controversial, included a list of conditions. One was that Hearst stay away from known criminals and weapons.

Since then, Carter has been an advocate of a full pardon for Hearst, asking former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to grant one.

The pardon came on Clinton’s final day in office. But unlike her commutation, Hearst’s full pardon has not generated much news.

Most of the controversy surrounding Clinton’s actions have focused on the pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, the commutation of the sentence of Los Angeles drug dealer Carlos Vignali and the pardon of herbal-remedy marketer Almon Glenn Braswell of Florida. In all, Clinton issued 140 pardons and 36 commutations on his last day in office.

Charles Weisselberg, a criminal procedure law professor at UC Berkeley, said he agrees with Levenson that the Hearst pardon will have little impact on the Olson trial.

Still, he said, if he were representing Olson, he would try to keep word of it from the jurors.

“If I were a defense lawyer, I would want to keep out evidence of a pardon because it looks like the president of the United States is vouching for [Hearst’s] version of the truth,” he said.

Hearst has said Olson, formerly Kathleen Soliah, was an active member of the SLA and its crime wave. Olson says she was only associated with the group and never took part in any crimes.

Stuart Hanlon, Olson’s former attorney who remains an advisor in the case, said he doesn’t believe the Hearst pardon, even if the jury learns of it, will matter much.

“Everyone knows Clinton’s pardons are suspect,” Hanlon said. “I think a lot of people don’t understand why she did get a pardon, other than she is a Hearst. I don’t think it is going to play a major role in the trial at all.”