Features

LOS ANGELES — When she was arrested a year and a half ago, Sara Jane Olson was still legally known as Kathleen Soliah, a fugitive who had eluded authorities for 25 years. Much has changed since then, including her name. 

The case which thrust this Minnesota housewife unwillingly into the public eye, however, is no closer to trial than it was after her friends and family posted $1 million for her bail in July 1999. 

Olson – the name she has used since she left her past behind in the radical 1970s – is charged with placing pipe bombs under police cars in 1974 as alleged retaliation for the deaths of her friends in a Symbionese Liberation Army shootout with officers.  

The bombs did not go off; no one was injured and Olson, who has maintained she had no connection with the events, disappeared. 

In June 1999 she was found in St. Paul, Minn. A tip from a viewer of TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” led the FBI to the doctor’s wife and mother of three who participated in amateur theatricals and was a tireless volunteer for her church and charities. 

She was arrested and brought to Los Angeles, scene of the alleged crime, and was jailed until her supporters bailed her out. 

And thus began a protracted legal minuet in which lawyers came and went, a key witness died, a new district attorney replaced the man who filed the charges and, last week, even the judge bowed out. Prosecutors are fuming over delays, but more postponements appear inevitable. 

Why are things moving so slowly? 

“I don’t think anyone feels any urgency since this case is 25 years old,” said Loyola University Law School Professor Laurie Levenson. 

There is also little concern about the now defunct radical group which made headlines when it kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst in 1974. Levenson recalled that as a law student she attended the Hearst trial in San Francisco and remembers the radically charged atmosphere. 

“Today, the SLA seems more like a nostalgic memory than a threat,” she said. “The defendant looks less like a radical than a housewife and when the public thinks of a threat to public safety they’re more likely to think of the Rampart police scandal than the SLA.” 

Even Hearst, who is expected to be the star witness for the prosecution, has said she would rather not appear and drag up events that seem like ancient history. 

For Olson, the delays have placed her in limbo, flying back and forth across the country to court appearances, listening as prosecutors denounce her and defense lawyers praise her, waiting as dates are set and then re-set for her trial. 

Three times, her chosen lawyers have announced they had to leave the case. Stuart Hanlon left because he was a widower with two small children and could not travel from San Francisco for a lengthy trial. Susan Jordan dropped out because of health problems brought on by stress and Deputy Public Defender Henry Hall left due to an unstated conflict of interest. 

In February, witness Jack Scott, who once helped Hearst go underground, died of throat cancer. He had been expected to testify for the defense. 

In November, District Attorney Gil Garcetti lost a re-election race to Steve Cooley. And now, in the strangest twist of all, Superior Court Judge James Ideman who handled the case from its inception suddenly bowed out when he was transferred to a suburban court. 

Another San Francisco lawyer representing Olson, J. Tony Serra, has failed to appear for several pretrial hearings and his co-counsel, Shawn Chapman, has said she is unable to prepare the case alone. An interim judge has ordered a hearing Monday to try to resolve the future of the case. 

Meanwhile, Deputy District Attorneys Michael Latin and Eleanor Hunter are furious. They filed a document accusing the defense of “purposeful stalling tactics intended to avoid trial.” 

They made an unusual motion to have the defense attorneys removed for failing to prepare. 

“The defendant was a fugitive for almost 25 years,” the prosecutors said in their motion. “Approximately 23 witnesses died during the course of her flight and several others have died since her arrest. To repeatedly claim that the defendant is just an innocent victim of circumstance defies logic. 

In separate interviews, both Chapman and Hanlon said the case could be accelerated if it was streamlined down to the basic charges. 

Ideman had expanded the scope to include the entire history of the SLA including the Hearst kidnapping, the killing of an Oakland schools superintendent, a Sacramento bank robbery in which a woman was killed and the Los Angeles shootout in which six SLA members died. The pipe bomb incident became a footnote. 

“The evidence that the court is permitting the prosecution to introduce includes 22 acts of uncharged misconduct, several of which were the subject of their own multi-month trials,” she said.