Prosecutors Argue Against Delay for Olson in SLA Trial

Los Angeles County prosecutors urged Friday that defense efforts to postpone jury selection in the conspiracy trial of Sara Jane Olson until January be rejected, arguing that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. do not warrant such a delay.

Lawyers for Olson filed a motion earlier this week asking Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler to delay jury selection until Jan. 3, citing the public fervor caused by the deadly terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon. They argued that the public mood could sway a jury against Olson. The motion will be heard Oct. 15, the scheduled starting day for trial motions.

Olson is accused of conspiring with members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a violent revolutionary group, to kill two Los Angeles police officers by putting bombs underneath their patrol cars in 1975.

Her lawyer, Shawn Snider Chapman, argued in a motion Tuesday that “the passage of time and diversions of the holiday season” would lessen the impact of last month’s attacks.

In their response Friday, Deputy Dist. Attys. Eleanor J. Hunter and Michael J. Latin dismissed Chapman’s arguments as speculative. They said Chapman’s assumptions place “little faith in the ability of our citizens to use their common sense, exercise their independent judgment or honor their oaths as jurors.”

Countering the defense contention, Hunter and Latin said the jury selection process gives lawyers ample opportunity to weed out potential panelists who may treat Olson unfairly. Moreover, they said national leaders have declared a war on terrorism that will last indefinitely and that the public’s concern about the attacks is not likely to abate by Jan. 3.

“There is no valid reason that the turn of international events should cause the judicial system, or any single case within it, to come to a grinding halt,” the prosecutors wrote.

They also noted that more than two years after Olson was arrested in the 26-year-old crime, her case still has not come to trial because of repeated continuances granted to the defense.

Chapman could not be reached for a reaction Friday. Earlier in the week, she said that the fervor against terrorism could be serious for Olson, because “the prosecutor will probably suggest she’s charged with some form of domestic terrorism.”

She pointed out that since the September attacks, other cases have been postponed. For example, a murder trial for an Egyptian immigrant in Orange County was delayed because 20 prospective jurors said the attacks upset them so much that they could not give the defendant a fair trial.