SACRAMENTO -- — Five employees at the state prison where former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson is incarcerated are under investigation in connection with her erroneous release last week, state officials said Thursday.
The employees are three rank-and-file workers who calculate inmate release dates, and two supervisors.
Olson was in prison for crimes she committed with the radical group in Los Angeles and Sacramento counties in 1975. She was freed March 17, but after an outcry by local law enforcement agencies, state officials realized that she must serve at least one more year. Olson was taken into custody Saturday and has been returned to prison.
Prison administrators apologized for their mistake and said they were launching an internal investigation.
Scott Kernan, the corrections department's chief deputy secretary for adult operations, said the employees are not likely to be punished unless the department discovers that they deliberately contributed to Olson's premature release. "What we are trying to do is investigate what happened so we can prevent it from happening" again, he said. "There is no intent to discipline our employees, unless we find malicious, willful misconduct."
The employees under investigation, at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, all had handled Olson's file at some point, department and union officials said. The union representing the three rank-and-file workers distributed letters that each received Monday from investigators with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ordering them to report for a tape-recorded "administrative inquiry" Tuesday at the prison.
"The scope of the investigation is relevant to the following allegation: On March 24, 2008, you were identified as neglectful in your duties when you failed to accurately calculate the release date of Inmate Olson, Sara, W-94197," said the letters, which were distributed Thursday afternoon -- with the workers' names blacked out by officials of the Service Employees International Union Local International 1000.
Kernan said the letters were required by procedure and do not necessarily mean the employees will be disciplined.
Olson was in prison for a 1975 plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars and for second-degree murder in a Sacramento bank robbery during which a customer was killed by another SLA member. She is now eligible for release in March 2009.
