Yes, No, Maybe So

When asked in court Wednesday whether she was pleading guilty freely and voluntarily to attempting to blow up LAPD cars in 1975, Sara Jane Olson responded with a firm, “I am.” Then she walked out of the courtroom and disavowed her plea, insisting as she has since her arrest two years ago near her St. Paul, Minn., home that she is innocent.

Which is it then?

The 25-year fugitive, who dropped her given name, Kathleen Soliah, when she dropped her radical past and reemerged as a Midwest mom, is trying to have it both ways.

Such duplicity doesn’t set well in the court of public opinion. Nor, it turns out, in a court of law. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler has set a hearing to decide whether to disregard Olson’s guilty plea and compel her to stand trial after all.

Olson claimed that the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks and the public’s renewed respect for police ruined her chances for a fair trial. She even had the gall to imply that she was a victim of the attacks.

Granted, the public mood has changed since Sept. 11, but that doesn’t mean juries are more eager than usual to convict thespian doctor’s wives. Not to mention that the trial’s timing can be blamed in large part on the defense itself. It sought a delay, for example, by arguing that there were not enough Latinos on the 1976 grand jury that handed down the indictment--a transparent grasping at straws. (The request was denied.)

The Sept. 11 attacks can as easily be seen as providing Olson with a face-saving way to avoid a trial whose outcome was always far from certain.

Those who believe that Olson planted pipe bombs under police cars and deserved to be brought to justice are pleased by the guilty plea, though angry at what they see as her continued defiance. Those who believe (or once believed) in Olson’s innocence are stunned and angry, some at a system they think gave her no choice, some at her for copping a plea after they took out second mortgages and raided their pension plans to help defend her. A third camp thinks she did the crime but should not be punished because it was years ago and she’s lived an exemplary life ever since, raising a family, acting in community theater, reading to the blind.

The plea agreement, assuming it holds up, includes mercy in the balance. Olson would serve a still-undetermined sentence, one that could be 20 years to life but that her attorneys hope will be about five years. She would serve it in a Minnesota prison, close to her family.

But justice? If the judge lets Olson decline a trial by pleading guilty-but-really-innocent, we’ll never know if she’s a genuine martyr or a failed murderer.