Editorials

Prosecutors urged a state appeals court Monday to allow evidence about the violent history of the Symbionese Liberation Army into former fugitive Sara Jane Olson’s bombing conspiracy trial. 

Olson’s attorneys objected to introducing the evidence because some of the nearly two dozen incidents prosecutors want to bring up never resulted in charges or occurred before their client allegedly joined the radical group. 

The SLA was linked to dozens of crimes, the most notorious being the 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. 

Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, is accused of attempting to murder Los Angeles police officers by placing pipe bombs under two squad cars in 1975, allegedly to avenge the deaths of SLA members killed in a fiery police shootout in Los Angeles. The bombs did not detonate and no one was hurt. 

Olson was indicted in 1976 and remained a fugitive until her arrest last year in Minnesota, where she had lived quietly as a wife and mother. Free on $1 million bail, she is scheduled to face trial in January. 

Prosecutors want to include evidence of other SLA crimes under a blanket conspiracy theory and to corroborate testimony by Hearst, now  

Patricia Hearst Shaw, the prosecution’s reluctant  

star witness. 

Hearst was kidnapped by the SLA at age 19 and ultimately joined the group. She was later convicted of taking part in an armed bank robbery, but President Carter commuted her sentence. 

“In order to understand the nature of the crime and the nature of (Olson’s) participation in it, it is necessary to understand the nature of the SLA and its members,” according to a petition filed Monday by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. 

Superior Court Judge James Ideman ruled last January that prosecutors could discuss the group’s history and philosophy when Olson goes on trial. 

In August, Olson’s attorneys filed a petition with the California Second District Court of Appeal seeking to overturn Ideman’s ruling. 

They claimed background on the SLA would prejudice a jury during the trial and accused prosecutors of trying to “salvage” a weak case by putting the SLA’s entire history on trial.