Posted on 09/08/2004 8:30:22 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHOWCHILLA, Calif. - A one-time member of the radical group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst had her sentence reduced by one year in the 1975 attempted bombings of two Los Angeles police cars.
The 13-year sentence given Tuesday to Sara Jane Olson, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, replaces the one handed down two years ago by the state Board of Prison Terms, which cited the potential violence and harm in the crime.
A judge dismissed the term in July, saying the board "abused its discretion" by simply following a recommendation from prosecutors.
Olson has already served more than five years of the term. Her lawyers said they planned to appeal Tuesday's sentence.
Olson, 57, vanished from California in 1975 and reinvented herself as a St. Paul, Minn., housewife before being arrested in 1999. She has been in prison ever since.
During the hearing at the Central California Women's Facility, she offered no defense, a contrast to her previous hearing when she cried and said, "I am incredibly sorry."
The SLA earlier achieved notoriety for kidnapping newspaper heiress Hearst and forcing her wealthy parents to donate millions of dollars worth of food to the poor.
As part of the hearing, two retired Los Angeles police officers testified that they could have died had the bombs gone off.
Marty Feinmark waved newspaper photos of children killed in the recent Russian school terrorist attack and told the three panel members, "It could have been a '60s thing to do, but that's the end result."
"Unless she starts taking responsibility for it, she can stay in prison for all I'm concerned," Feinmark added.
Another retired officer, John Hall, said "I could have died that evening, leaving behind my wife and three-month-old daughter. My other two children would never have been born."
Olson, born Kathleen Ann Soliah, originally received a five-year, four-month sentence for the attempted bombing and was scheduled for a July 2005 release. Los Angeles authorities call the attempted pipe bombing a retaliation for the 1974 deaths of six SLA colleagues in a shootout with police. Olson pleaded guilty to the bombing charges after her 1999 arrest.
Olson's attorneys argued that she has led a crime-free, stable life for nearly three decades. She is "in no way likely to commit a crime of extraordinary violence," attorney David Nickerson said.
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Eleanor Hunter said Olson was "an integral part of the SLA."
"She bought parts for the bombs. She helped make the bombs," Hunter said. "She is a dangerous person and her crimes reflect what a danger she is. This woman manufactured pipe bombs. These were huge pipe bombs. These were some of the biggest pipe bombs ever made in this country."
In stiffening Olson's sentence two years ago, the prison board turned to a seldom-used section of state law, allowing it to recalculate sentences for old crimes in light of new, tougher sentencing guidelines.
Once a terrorist, always a terrorist.
Will she get to vote for Kerry?
Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson responds to a question during her parole hearing held at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, Calif., Tuesday Sept. 7, 2004. Olson who has been in prison since her arrest in 1999, was sentenced to 13 years in prison by the California Board of Prison Terms. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
I wonder what her sentence would have been if she attended a meeting where a plan was hatched out to assassinate Senators.
Totally freakin' outrageous...
Good.
The St. Paul protest community still misses her...
To this day I'm still convinced that Patty Hearst should have done hard time. There's no way she joined her "kidnappers" while she was held- I'm betting that she was in on the plan from the get-go. It was a fundraising technique pioneered by the Red Brigades in Italy- recruit a rich kid to stage an abduction and squeeze cash from daddy.
If Jimmy Carter pardoned her, you can bet there was criminal association of some kind.
-"...I am incredibly sorry..."-
..."I got caught."
Marty Feinmark waved newspaper photos of children killed in the recent Russian school terrorist attack and told the three panel members, "It could have been a '60s thing to do, but that's the end result."
I don't know what a fair sentence for Olson would be, but I think bringing Beslan into it is going a little too far and could be grounds for appeal.
when I hear about this evil creep, it reminds me why I hate the left so passionately....
she had the balls to commit felonies on decent people and then she goes and lives the comfortable life with her doctor husband as all good little leftist do....
amazing how these haters or the working class and haters of materialism and haters of government and haters of living the rich life end up after all, living the good life with lots of money and a nice house and all the trappings of the upper class....
I spit on them....
May Kathleen Soliah turn even older, and dowdier looking in prison, may she meet a nice and strong woman named "Bertha" and may her name and her whole family's name be always associated with leftist swine...
Patty Hearst DID do time.....she did time when all the Harrises and the Soliahs and the Bortins and the whole gang was free......
She quit THAT group, but only after her name appeared on the roll call in a midwestern city.
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