PROSECUTOR USING HEARST IN OLSON TRIAL.

Byline: Michael Taylor San Francisco Chronicle 

Los Angeles prosecutors, possibly worried that they have a shaky case against onetime radical fugitive Sara Jane Olson, plan to dredge up the entire Patricia Hearst/Symbionese Liberation Army saga of 25 years ago to use against her.

``It seems they want to try her for conspiracy to commit a revolution,'' says her exasperated attorney, Stuart Hanlon. ``It really is the attempt of a desperate prosecution.''

A spokeswoman for Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti declined to discuss the case in detail, but did concede that it is not an easy one to present, more than 20 years after the fact, and she noted that the only witness to Olson's alleged crime died more than five years ago.

The new assault on Olson comes in the form of an exhaustive prosecution trial brief, which accuses Olson - then known as Kathleen Soliah - of being a dedicated revolutionary who was just as committed to violence and destruction as members of the SLA itself. Most of the brief deals with the notorious acts of Patty Hearst and the SLA.

Olson, a 1965 Palmdale High School graduate, is now a 52-year-old Minnesota housewife. She was indicted by a Los Angeles County grand jury in February 1976 on murder conspiracy and explosives charges, stemming from an incident in the fall of 1975 when Olson allegedly placed two pipe bombs under Los Angeles police cars. The bombs never exploded.

Olson later went underground and changed her name. She eventually moved to St. Paul, Minn., married a doctor and raised a family. She was arrested last June and is now free on $1 million bail, awaiting trial in January.

Twenty-five years ago, she was something of a hanger-on to the SLA, a gang that had kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst and later converted her to their cause. If anything, Olson was kind of an SLA understudy and in most of the historical writings about that era was not considered a heavyweight, machine-gun-wielding terrorist.

Now, Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, in his 26-page trial brief, has reiterated almost the entire history of the Hearst/SLA case, starting with the murder of Oakland schools Superintendent Marcus Foster in November 1973, eight months before Olson was connected to the SLA, and continuing through the arrests of Hearst and SLA members Bill and Emily Harris in September 1975.

Hearst has been subpoenaed as a prosecution witness against Olson.

Olson's ``role in the attempted Los Angeles bombings reflected the extent of her dedication to the path of terrorism embraced by the SLA `comrades,' '' Garcetti's brief says. ``Her active participation in other bombings, planned thefts, and two bank robberies - one in which a mother of four was killed - demonstrates her commitment, along with her co-conspirators, to effect revolutionary changes through terrorist acts against innocent victims.''

Garcetti also implicated Olson in the April 21, 1975, robbery of a Crocker Bank branch in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael. During the robbery, a 42-year-old woman was killed by a shotgun blast. Hearst, who was driving the getaway car, says Emily Harris pulled the trigger. Yet the only criminal prosecution ensuing from the robbery was a federal case against Olson's brother, Steven Soliah, who was acquitted.

The prosecutor's brief so outraged Hanlon on Tuesday that he took the unusual step of blasting it publicly, in contrast with his earlier reticence to discuss the case in any detail.

``The indictment (against Olson) is really clear - a conspiracy to blow up two police cars,'' Hanlon said. ``That's the case, and I think they've determined they have no evidence of that, and so now they are blackening her name.''

Most of the brief is devoted to the violent acts of others - here's Hearst, machine gun in hand, robbing the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco in April 1974; there's Hearst spraying the front of Mel's Sporting Goods in Los Angeles with machine-gun fire a month later.

Hearst was ultimately convicted in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in connection with the Hibernia Bank robbery and served two years in prison before President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. Now, with the public support of Carter, she is trying to get a presidential pardon.

``More than 90 percent of that trial brief is based on Patty Hearst and her book,'' Hanlon said, referring to Hearst's autobiography and its oft-disputed version of events. ``All these things are being connected by Patty Hearst. They're trying to retry an entire conspiracy 25 years later, and I don't know the point of it.''

Asked about the point of it, Los Angeles district attorney spokeswoman Victoria Pipkin declined to ``try this case in the media,'' but added, ``We do recognize that, unlike wine, old cases don't age gracefully, but a judge did sign an arrest warrant (against Soliah) more than 20 years ago, and there were facts presented for that warrant.''