Judge Clears Olson’s Lawyer

Shawn Chapman, a defense attorney in the bomb conspiracy trial of alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson, was cleared Friday of charges that she illegally disclosed the addresses of two police officer witnesses.

Deputy City Atty. Edward Gauthier told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Ryan that evidence shows that Chapman played no role in publicly revealing the addresses in a court document. Ryan granted Gauthier’s motion to dismiss the charges.

Chapman said the city attorney’s office never would have filed the charges against her if it had reviewed the evidence at the outset.

“The timing of the charges are suspicious, because the [Olson] trial was about to start and the election was underway,” she said, referring to City Atty. James K. Hahn’s campaign for mayor of Los Angeles. “Mr. Hahn was trying to curry favor with the police union,” she charged.

Mike Qualls, spokesman for the city attorney’s office, denied the allegations.

“It [the case] was filed when it was ready to be filed,” he said. “It would be totally inappropriate to be influenced by outside factors.”

Despite Chapman’s exoneration, the city attorney’s action still threatens to throw the schedule of the long-delayed Olson trial into disarray.

Chapman’s co-counsel, Tony Serra, continues to face a July 30 trial date on the same charges, and he has vowed to withdraw from Olson’s defense team if he is convicted. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, who is presiding over Olson’s case, agreed recently to delay pretrial hearings in that prosecution until the charges against the lawyers are resolved.

Those misdemeanor charges were based on a state law designed to protect witnesses by prohibiting attorneys from including their addresses in public filings.

Serra has said his secretary drew up the document, signed his name to it and filed it while he was out of town. It contained the addresses and phone numbers of officers John Hall and James Bryan, intended targets of the alleged bomb plot. The document, including the addresses and phone numbers, was then posted on an Internet Web site created to raise money for Olson’s defense.

If Serra withdraws, the current September trial date for Olson would be in jeopardy.

“The case cannot go forward with one defense attorney,” Chapman said. “There would have to be another continuance to give the new attorney time to get up to speed.”

Olson’s trial already has been continued five times.

Prosecutors say Olson, who was was arrested in June 1999 after more than two decades in hiding, conspired in 1975 to kill LAPD officers by rigging two squad cars with bombs. The bombs did not detonate.

Olson’s lawyers say the misdemeanor charges filed against them have made preparation for trial more difficult.

“It has been surprisingly distracting,” Chapman said.