Bail $500,000 Bail Set Cut Ordered for SLA Suspect

A Superior Court judge settled the near-term fate Thursday of the last of four Symbionese Liberation Army suspects arrested in a bloody 1975 suburban bank robbery, ordering $500,000 bail for Michael Bortin and paving the way for his release.

Judge Thomas Cecil rejected arguments by prosecutors that Bortin, 53, should be held on $1-million bail, a level his attorneys said the revolutionary turned hardwood floor tradesman could not meet.

“There’s precious little evidence leading me to believe Mr. Bortin is a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Cecil declared, noting that bail is intended to ensure a defendant’s presence at trial, not serve as punishment.

Defense attorneys said they expected bail, secured with the help of his family and friends, to be posted and Bortin released by early next week.

James A. Bustamante, one of Bortin’s attorneys, said his client is “a very happy man.”

His release would mean that three of the four defendants in the case have been allowed to return home before trial, which probably won’t begin until early next year.

Bill and Emily Harris, former spouses and now defendants in the Sacramento case, were released last month after each posted $1-million bail.

The fourth defendant, Sara Jane Olson, remains behind bars and ineligible for release after being sentenced six weeks ago to prison for a failed bombing attempt against LAPD officers in 1975.

A fifth suspect, James Kilgore, has been a fugitive since the 1970s.

Along with Bortin, they are accused of participating in a bank heist 27 years ago in a Sacramento suburb that ended with the shotgun slaying of Myrna Opsahl, a 42-year-old mother of four. She had just arrived at the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael to count church dues when masked gunmen stormed the branch.

The case has refocused national attention on the SLA, one of the most violent bands of militants to emerge during the Vietnam War era. The group rocketed into the headlines in 1974 with the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rob Gold said Bortin deserved bail equal to that of his co-defendants because of the serious nature of the crime, his “violent career” with the SLA and his fugitive past. For a decade in the 1970s and early ‘80s, Bortin evaded law officers.

But after serving time for past crimes during his radical years, Bortin married Olson’s sister, Josephine, and established roots and a business in Portland, Ore., where he lives with his wife and children.

Tony Serra, one of his attorneys, told the judge during a 45-minute hearing that Bortin “in many ways was a wayward youth,” but that he is “a much different person now. .... He won’t disappoint you.”

After the hearing, Josephine Bortin said simply, “I just want to bring him home safely.” She then fled down a hallway from a cluster of TV news cameras.