Jane Olson

Prosecutors filed papers in Superior Court on Monday arguing the 1976 conspiracy indictment against former radical Sara Jane Olson should not be dismissed as overly broad because the grand jury had heard evidence of her direct participation in attempts to bomb Los Angeles police cars. The papers, filed by Deputy Dist. Attys. Eleanor Hunter and Michael Latin, responded to a previous defense motion asking the judge to toss out the 23-year-old indictment.

Sara Jane Olson was released Tuesday from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla after serving seven years for murder and other crimes. We'd like to say that this brings a measure of closure to her case, but of course it doesn't. Olson was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a self-styled urban guerrilla group most notorious for kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst in the early 1970s.

Prosecutors on Monday urged a state appeals court to allow them to use the violent history of a notorious 1970s radical group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, during the bomb-plot trial of a former associate. Attorneys for Minnesota housewife Sara Jane Olson last month asked the 2nd District Court of Appeal to exclude evidence of crimes attributed to the SLA that occurred before Olson became associated with the group.

Culminating a case that has evoked history and strong emotions, former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson was released from state prison Tuesday and cleared to serve supervised parole in Minnesota after completing a seven-year sentence for bank robbery and attempting to kill Los Angeles police officers.

Ask Ron Olson to talk about himself and he defers: "My wife, Jane, is the interesting one." Ask Jane, and she demurs: "There's not much to say. Shouldn't you focus just on Ron?" That's the Olson charm. After 30 years of marriage and three kids, the attorney and the activist still seem more interested in each other than in themselves. "If there's a marriage made in heaven, this is it," Jane says with a smile. "It's grown in romance (since) the empty nest."

Attorneys for former fugitive Sara Jane Olson say they will return to Superior Court on Tuesday to ask the judge to delay her trial, now scheduled to begin Feb. 7. Attorneys Susan Jordan and Stuart Hanlon would not discuss specifics, citing a gag order imposed Monday by Judge James M. Ideman. But the lawyers previously said they have not yet received all the bomb components and other materials they want to have analyzed by expert witnesses.

Henry J. Hall, whose clients have included Night Stalker Richard Ramirez and the man convicted of killing Bill Cosby's son, has been appointed to defend Sara Jane Olson, the Minnesota doctor's wife accused of plotting to kill police officers by planting pipe bombs under squad cars in 1975. Hall, a lawyer with the alternate public defender's office, joined Oakland attorney Susan B. Jordan but will be paid at taxpayer expense. Olson has said she has run out of money to pay lawyers.

The judge in the case of accused Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson issued strict guidelines Tuesday for television coverage of her upcoming trial. Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler said witnesses will not automatically be on TV. Instead, he will decide on a witness-by-witness basis. Fidler said the cameras must be stationary at all times. Because of public safety issues, he said, he will not allow any TV coverage of testimony regarding how to make bombs.

A witness expected to testify in the murder conspiracy case of alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson suffered a heart attack Tuesday night and has been hospitalized, according to prosecutors. Evelyn Burns, 78, has become the third elderly witness for the prosecution to suffer a health setback in the last couple of weeks. Prosecutors have been allowed to proceed with what are called conditional examinations, or interviews, of the witnesses before the trial starts.

A key attorney who has represented former Symbionese Liberation Army sympathizer Sara Jane Olson since her arrest has left the case because of illness and is asking to be replaced by another high-profile defense lawyer. Susan B. Jordan said she needs to withdraw from the defense team because of a serious medical condition known as trigeminal neuralgia, which causes her extreme pain in her face.

More than a generation has passed since the August night in 1975 when Sara Jane Olson and other Symbionese Liberation Army members tried to assassinate Los Angeles police officers by placing pipe bombs under squad cars. But for John Hall, one of the officers targeted in the plot, the memories of that night and what might have been remain vivid.

The Los Angeles police union Monday called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to oppose a bid by former Symbionese Liberation Army member and fugitive Sara Jane Olson to serve her supervised parole in Minnesota, where she would be near her family.

Former 1970s radical Sara Jane Olson returned to the Central California prison where she spent six years before her short-lived release last week, a corrections department spokesman said Sunday. The onetime Symbionese Liberation Army member arrived at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla about 9 p.m. Saturday, said Seth Unger of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Olson's return came after corrections officials said a miscalculation had resulted in her early release.

Re "A Life on Hold in Prison," Column One, Aug. 14 Thank you for the article about Sara Jane Olson's experience in prison. Such personal stories inform the public debate about reform of our state prison system in a way that is invaluable. Today we learn that prisoners are denied permission to plant a vegetable garden because the warden fears that the harvest will be used to brew alcoholic beverages. Is the prison staff powerless to prevent the operation of breweries within the prison walls?

Shortly after 8 each weekday morning, Inmate W94197 reports for work on the prison yard. She earns 24 cents an hour emptying trash cans and tidying up. She is grateful for the job. Caught in 1999 after living as a fugitive for 23 years, she was convicted of murder and other crimes stemming from her link with the Symbionese Liberation Army, a violent band of radicals best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. Then Sara Jane Olson went to prison, and turned invisible.

Nearly three decades after her role in the attempted bombings of Los Angeles police cruisers, former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson had one year shaved off her sentence for what prosecutors called a 1970s act of terrorism. The 13-year sentence given Tuesday replaces the one handed down two years ago by the state Board of Prison Terms, which cited the crime's potential for violence and harm.

A state appeals court is considering a request by lawyers for bomb suspect Sara Jane Olson to sharply limit testimony about the Symbionese Liberation Army's criminal history, especially crimes that occurred before Olson joined the radical group. Olson, a 53-year-old Minnesota housewife, is accused of plotting to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up squad cars 25 years ago.

Attorneys for alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson said Thursday that they will ask to be removed from her conspiracy case as a result of their being charged with misdemeanor offenses for work done on her behalf. "We believe legally we have been prodded into a position where there's a conflict of interest between us and our client," one of her attorneys, Tony Serra of San Francisco, said at a hearing Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

When Sara Jane Olson pleaded guilty last October for her role in the 1975 attempted pipe bombings of two LAPD patrol cars, the coda on the Symbionese Liberation Army finally seemed to have been written. The gang that had assassinated Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent of Oakland's public schools, and kidnapped Patricia Hearst was at last confirmed as homemade, middle-class American terrorists.

A full generation after their alleged crime, William and Emily Harris and Sara Jane Olson, co-survivors of the weird and violent revolutionary movement known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, were arrested Wednesday and charged with murdering a Sacramento-area church volunteer during a 1975 bank robbery. A fourth person, Michael Bortin, was arrested on similar charges.