Poor Sara Jane
Get out your hankies and prepare to sob your way through the sad story of Sara Jane Olson’s incarceration in Chowcilla State Prison, as related by the Los Angeles Times.
Olson is the former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) who participated in bank robberies, one of which led of a woman’s death, and who conspired to blow up some LAPD squad cars. The article about her prison confinement is a ridiculously sycophantic piece that laments her prison conditions, understates her culpability in her crimes, overstates her remorse, and fails to consult with relatives of the victims of SLA killings.
Here’s how this puff piece starts:
CHOWCHILLA, Calif. — 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.
We’re told that she’s bored, and gets scared of becoming sick:
At the Central California Women’s Facility here, Olson — whose name was Kathleen Soliah in the heyday of the SLA — is now a white-haired woman of 59, serving out her seven years.
Her experience, related in letters and a series of conversations, reveals much about punishment and survival in a state system that holds 11,730 women.
She fears falling ill and landing in the prison healthcare organization that experts say claims one life a week through malpractice or neglect.
She laments the absence of anything meaningful to do. She craves privacy. And she tiptoes nervously through each day while awaiting that moment in 2009 when she’ll go home to her husband and daughters in Minnesota.
Is your hanky moist yet?
Next we get to hear what a great woman she was in Minnesota. She acted. She taught citizenship classes. She “volunteered for groups aiding African refugees, the poor and other causes, and recorded books for the blind.”
Oh, sure, maybe she conspired to put bombs under LAPD squad cars. But, hey! “The bombs did not explode and no one was hurt.” No harm, no foul. Similarly, a few wacky guys conspired to blow 10 airplanes out of the sky recently, but the planes were not blown up and no one was hurt. So what’s the problem?
Taking a page from her own book of self-pity, the paper blames her guilty plea on 9/11:
Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Olson decided not to take her chances in court.
“For the first time,” she recalled, “people started referring to me as a terrorist.”
What, a terrorist? Just for conspiring to set off bombs under LAPD squad cars? Nah, that doesn’t sound like terrorism to me!
The article cavalierly accepts her claim of minimal involvement in the bombing conspiracy:
While accounts of her involvement with the SLA vary, she and others say her link was forged after a close friend and five other SLA members were killed in a shootout with Los Angeles police in 1974. In previous interviews, Olson said she then provided shelter, food and other aid to SLA members hiding from police but never planted any bombs.
After Olson was returned to Los Angeles for trial, prosecutors amassed 23,000 pages of documents, fingerprints and other evidence against her, and lined up 200 potential witnesses. The trial promised high drama — the saga of a fetching high school pep-squad member turned fugitive — and a revisiting of the social tumult of the 1970s.
Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Olson decided not to take her chances in court.
So there’s the picture the paper has painted: Olson didn’t do anything, but she couldn’t help pleading guilty because of September 11. But it’s not consistent with the evidence against her:
As for the L.A. bombs, there are Soliah/Olson’s fingerprints on a map of Los Angeles that was found in the San Francisco house on Precita occupied by Bill and Emily Harris. There is a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol, purchased in L.A. and discovered in the desk drawer of what authorities claim was Soliah’s bedroom in the house. There is a cache of bomb components, many of which are said to match the devices placed under the LAPD cruisers, that was seized from a locked closet at Precita. Finally, there is a letter, in Soliah’s handwriting, bearing her signature, sending away for a type of fuse that could only be used in explosives.
She was a leetle more involved than she (or the paper) wants to admit now.
She’s also a little less remorseful than the paper portrays her.
We’re told that she wrote a letter to the court expressing some remorse:
Instead, she pleaded guilty to attempting to explode a destructive device with the intent to commit murder. In another plea agreement in a separate SLA case, she and three others were convicted of second-degree murder stemming from a Sacramento-area bank robbery in which customer Myrna Opsahl was killed.
“We were young and foolish,” Olson said at the time in a letter to the court, and “in the end, we stole someone’s life.”
And we’re told that she’s still remorseful:
Today, she doesn’t want to discuss the events that landed her in prison, but she has expressed remorse more than once in the past.
“I’m incredibly sorry,” she told the state parole board in 2002. “Of course, I can’t take it back, so I have to take responsibility, and that’s what I’m doing now.”
Here is what the story doesn’t tell you: this vaunted “taking of responsibility” is not quite all it’s cracked up to be. From Wikipedia:
Immediately after entering the plea, however, Olson told reporters that she was innocent and that her plea bargain was a lie forced on her by the climate after the September 11, 2001 attacks. “It became clear to me that the incident would have a remarkable effect on the outcome of this trial … the effect was probably going to be negative,” she said. “That’s really what governed this decision, not the truth or honesty, but what was probably in my best interests and the interests of my family.”
Angered by Olson’s announcement that she had lied in court, Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler ordered another hearing on November 6, at which he asked her several times if she was indeed guilty of the charges. Olson, rolling her eyes and sighing theatrically, replied “I want to make it clear, Your Honor, that I did not make that bomb. I did not possess that bomb. I did not plant that bomb. But under the concept of aiding and abetting, I plead guilty.”
Then, on November 13, Olson filed a motion requesting to withdraw her guilty plea because “I realize I cannot plead guilty when I know I am not.” She acknowledged that she did not misunderstand the judge when he read the charges against her. Rather, she said “Cowardice prevented me from doing what I knew I should: Throw caution aside and move forward to trial. … I am not second-guessing my decision as much as I have found the courage to take what I know is the honest course. Please, Judge Fidler, grant my request to go to trial.”
On December 3, 2001, Fidler offered to let Olson testify under oath about her role in the case. She refused. He then wondered “I took those pleas twice … were you lying to me then or are you lying to me now?” — and denied her request to withdraw her plea.
And from an earlier linked article:
“I did not have anything to do with those bombs. If I did harm, I did not mean to, and I want to apologize. I am truly grateful for all that I’ve had in my life.”
Amazing, the way she took responsibility, isn’t it? The remorse just oozes out of her, huh?
The paper doesn’t tell us about that.
Nor does it have a hint of the perspective of the families of any of the victims of Olson and her confederates. Where is the family of Myrna Opsahl, killed in a bank robbery that Olson helped plan and carry out? Marcus Foster, a school superintendent in Oakland, was also killed by SLA nutcases. But, like Opsahl, we do not hear from his family members. Apparently, they “turned invisible.”
Instead, we hear more sad details about the conditions of Olson’s confinement:
Olson’s days pass in a locked, 18-foot-by-18-foot dorm-like cell shared with seven other women. She spends hours on her metal bunk, writing on yellow legal pads to 30 friends and relatives. She also watches more TV than she ever has before.
The concrete room is sterile, with shower and toilet doors that have cut-outs at waist level so inmates are always visible. Prison rules forbid homey touches, save for pictures of family taped here and there.
. . . .
In the beginning, Olson went through a period many newly incarcerated people describe — wondering whether she could survive. Some scream and yell; others stare out the window day after day.
“I grabbed a shovel and dug and hoed and raked on the yard for a couple months,” Olson recalled. “Some people thought I was crazy, but the old-timers understood.”
Surviving in prison meant accepting what she called “enforced idleness,” with one monotonous day sliding into the next. The noise is ceaseless, the facility packed to twice its intended capacity.
“We live on top of each other,” she said. Anything private “has to be done inside your head.”
To escape the din and pass the time, she walks obsessively — hour after hour, loop after loop around the prison yard.
That’s more than Myrna Opsahl gets to do.
You can put your hankies away now.
Dude, didn’t you get the memo? We’re not fighting a war against terrorism anymore, only against Islamic fascism. Olson may have been a terrorist, but her terrorism was not committed in the name of Islam. She should totally walk.
Xrlq (6fbc27) — 8/15/2006 @ 7:11 amI must assume that your post is meant to be ironic.
otcconan (268834) — 8/15/2006 @ 7:15 amThe “good works” she was credited with in Minnesota included a typical menu of leftist activism. Once she is free of the legal system, I expect she will be busy obstructing Israeli bulldozers burying Palestinian weapons smuggling tunnels.
Mike K (416363) — 8/15/2006 @ 7:24 amOh Patterico, say it isn’t so! Say it’s some kind of cruel imagaination of the LA Times reporter. Why instead of being cast in to hell with the wailing and gnashing of teeth, could there be anything worse than being in the Chowchilla State Prison. (Why if one of those planted devices had gone of in my car, I’m sure I would have vastly preferred to be in the car to the Chowchilla State Prison.)
Please Patterico tell me it’s not true. I couldn’t live knowing such pain and torture is occuring in this State.
Joel B. (35e9f2) — 8/15/2006 @ 7:30 amI gave up on “rehabilitation”, “deterrence”, “interests of justice”, and to some extent “retribution” as achievable goals of our criminal justice system a long time ago. “Incapacitation” is all we can really accomplish — remove the criminal from society so that he can no longer do harm. So from that perspective, the scarce prison resources we are spending on this lady are probably better spent on someone else.
nk (35ba30) — 8/15/2006 @ 7:39 amWith each passing day I am happier and happier that I no longer pay money to receive this particular sort of tripe at my front door. I forsee that the LAT’s subscription base will continue to dwindle, with the paper’s top executives never quite understanding why.
JVW (d667c9) — 8/15/2006 @ 8:15 amNK,
I think we have plenty of room in the prisons for everyone who has done worse than Sara Jane, plus room for some folks who have committed lesser crimes than 2nd degree murder and attempted murder.
Mike S (d3f5fd) — 8/15/2006 @ 8:51 amPity the poor victim criminal…
Patterico points out yet another L.A. Times article skillfully eliciting sympathy for the victims of terrorism. Gotcha! Actually, the Times has produced an article highlighting how hard it is to be a leftist moonbat murderess being oppressed by The Man…
Out on a limb at Mike Lief.com (150b64) — 8/15/2006 @ 9:07 amI think she got plenty of sympathy from the state — in that she was sentenced to only seven years. And now she’s whining that even that is too long? Cry me a river!
Were she as innocent as she claimed, why did she go on the lam for 23 years rather than take her day in court, way back when, when the evidence was fresh? Heck, had she been caught back then, she’d already be out!
I guess that we’ll be seeing the Free Mumia bovine feces from the LAT pretty soon.
Dana (3e4784) — 8/15/2006 @ 10:30 amNK raises the point:
I gave up on “rehabilitation”, “deterrence”, “interests of justice”, and to some extent “retribution” as achievable goals of our criminal justice system a long time ago. “Incapacitation” is all we can really accomplish — remove the criminal from society so that he can no longer do harm. So from that perspective, the scarce prison resources we are spending on this lady are probably better spent on someone else.
Heck, we could similarly assume that Andrea Yates needn’t be locked up (in a loony bin) since, after all, she has no more children to kill.
I agree that incapacitation is a very real goal, but punishment must be as well. There are a lot of people about whom it could be argued that they are past the point of necessary incapacitation, and therefore ought to be released: Ira Einhorn, who doesn’t have any more young chicks in his life to kill; Charles Manson, who’s well beyond the point of being able to attract followers to kill innocent people; Jack Kevorkian, who’s just really, really sorry and won’t do that again, Susan Smith, another one who’s out of kids to kill, and the list goes on and on and on.
Yeah, from a strictly incapacitation standpoint, imprisoning Mrs Olsen is a waste of time and resources; in that regard, NK is right. And I suppose we could accomplish anything really needed by electronic monitoring and house arrest; heck that’s what one judge gave a University of Pennsylvania medical researcher for rape, because he was too important for jail.
But punishment is a valid reason — and it needs to be continued.
Dana (3e4784) — 8/15/2006 @ 10:39 amEach to his own. I find it easy to both have a lot of sympathy for Soliah/Olsen, and to think that she really ought to have gotten a longer sentence, and shouldn’t be let out a moment earlier than possible.
Joel Rosenberg (b6087d) — 8/15/2006 @ 11:35 amHere’s another one! Poor Mary.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208461,00.html
1st degree murder charge, and she’s out on bail…anxious to see her three kids. Sheesh.
RHB (fbae5a) — 8/15/2006 @ 11:44 amWhat a sad tale indeed.
She was clearly remorseful, which is why, after realizing her crimes, she surrendered to authorities six months after their commission, describing others’ contributions to innocent people’s deaths.
What? No?
OK, she was clearly remorseful, so she sent weekly checks to the victims’ families.
No?
Oh! She’s clearly remorseful that she got caught. She’s very sorry that she’s in prison. It might be a worse place than that restaurant which served your medium rare steak to you medium well; it is indeed some kind of hellhole.
And the victims are still dead. Why are we caring about them, still? Pat, are you some sort of liberal wussy, caring about people that way? Yes, instead we should care for the living. Who are sorry. They are in prison.
Seriously, in the end, the Sara Jane Olson story is a fascinating one of contrasts; in the end her murderous ways overwhelm any good she has done in her lifetime. She’s still obviously a narcissistic, evil woman. That she looks like someone’s grandmother doesn’t make her any less evil, and there’s a fascinating story to be written about her. This wasn’t it.
I’ll feel sorry for her after I finish feeling sorry for every person the SLA hurt or killed, their families, their friends, people who would have been in the future been helped by the killed but for their deaths, people who were hurt because of the need to expend substantial resources to catch her rather than do something else, people who had to read about her crimes, and law enforcement who had to worry about evil scum trying to blow them up.
After I get through them, and every non-felon in the world, and every non-murderer, and some less evil murderers, then I’ll feel sorry for Sara Jane Olson.
I’m not very far down this list yet. It might take some time.
–JRM
JRM (de6363) — 8/15/2006 @ 1:06 pmDana, do you know of any definition of “incapacitation” in any variant of the English language which encompasses any of your examples in Comment 10? Incapacitaion means to render somebody incapable to act. In this context either by imprisonment or death. (In Sharia law also by mutilation and amputation but we won’t go there.)
There are two problems with “punishment”: 1) You are locking the barn door after the horse is gone. 2) You may feel good about the criminal getting his just desserts but it is not the punishment itself but the incapacitation which is inflicted as a punishment that will protect society from further crimes. (There is a third one, namely, that the criminal is still a member of our society and society should not engage in pointless cruelty against its own members any more than a parent should inflict pointless cruelty on his children but that could lead to a discussion of three volumes plus appendix.) I will submit that if society were serious about punishing this lady, she would have been arrested twenty years ago and either put to death, sentenced to life in prison, or sold into slavery as permitted under the Thirteenth Amendment.
nk (54c569) — 8/15/2006 @ 1:51 pmI had a little different take on the story–at least when I read it. Here Sara is, a pathetic little figure who’s scared stiff every friggin’ day. Presumably doing what she can to not be shanked, raped or have her possessions stolen. Not really the romantic notion that some might have of incarceration of a “freedom fighter” and I hope this helps dissuade others that might think of following in her footsteps–even so slightly.
Her life sucks, yes she deserves it and in my opinion deserves worse, and with the coverage comes a public reminder that her life does indeed suck. I would rather have a story like this than a story those about how Tookie Williams spent his locked up days penning children’s books with psycho women who craved the many love that only a double killer can give. Those made me want to throw up.
insider (da5b3e) — 8/15/2006 @ 4:59 pmThat should be “manly” love…
insider (da5b3e) — 8/15/2006 @ 5:01 pmWhitewash…
Patterico is shredding the LA Times’ insipid puff piece on celebrity terrorist Sara Jane Soliah, which gives me an excuse to post a link to one of James Lileks’ greatest hits, chock full o’ gems like this: (It’s always okay……
JunkYardBlog (621918) — 8/15/2006 @ 5:21 pmI see the incredible moral inversion of this story and wonder who could possibly think writing this story in this way is a good idea.
We learn Sara Jane endures a tedious life of forced separation from her husband and children. Olson’s victim had a husband and children, too, and they’re separated with no possibility of a visiting day. But Olson’s victim is just a footnote, old news not really worth mentioning.
What are we supposed to take away from this story:
–A murder commited by leftist “revolutionaries” isnt really a big deal? It’s more like misguided overenthusiasm.
–The 70’s were a crazy time, this could have happened to any of us? Us meaning the aging ex-radicals on the Times editorial staff.
–The victim is long forgotten, and punishing her murderer won’t bring her back?
Seriuously, what is the point of this story?
Do you think anyone in Times management understands how repellent this story is and how it damages their paper? I wonder how many people cancelled their Times subscriptions today due to this story.
This story was undoubtedly read by a number of editors before seeing print. Did anyone in authority have doubts about celebrating a murderer in print? It would seem not.
In my world, murderers are bad and viuctims deserve justice. In Timesworld, leftist murderers are really OK and victims are, like, whatever.
I’m not interested in hearing any more from the inhabitants of Timesworld.
Mike (8135c5) — 8/15/2006 @ 7:55 pmSince I know something of prison healthcare systems,I would like to know the source of the one patient/week dieing of malpractice and neglect.Is this in the whole world?Or in California?And who are the experts.I know this is the LAT,but it’s indescribably sloppy.SInce you’re citing unknown experts,etc.,why not have one prisoner /hour die.This reminds me of a scene in “Stiff Upper Lip,Jeeves”,where jeeves rescues Bertie posing as a “Chief Inspector Witherspoon” of Scotland Yard.Bertie’s response to the rescueis,”Why Witherspoon?On the other hand,why not?”
lincoln (ddd65c) — 8/15/2006 @ 8:18 pmIf the CDC were really losing one patient per week due to malpractice or error, I would think that the DogTrainer would be all over that stuff.
Wouldn’t ya think?
What? The CDC is a huge state-run bureaucracy? And it’s employee unions give gobs of money to Donk politicians?
Never mind.
JD (044292) — 8/15/2006 @ 11:12 pmHer children are adults. If they want to visit her, they can do so without dad footing the bill. Olson has the luxury of going back to her upper middle class life when she is released. And what was the purpose of this puff piece? To influence the parole board? If so, it’s going to backfire, because she is still only paying lipservice to her culpability. Just like she when she shot her big fat mouth off after entering a plea.
sam (50fd63) — 8/16/2006 @ 7:27 amHey, did they ever actually liberate Symbionia? I always felt sorry for those poor, oppressed Symbionese.
Ellers Ellison "Ellsberg" McWilson (f22734) — 8/16/2006 @ 11:53 amNK asks:
I used incapacitation as meaning the separation of the felon from society, to prevent him from being able to commit further crimes. While execution would cover that, I oppose capital punishment, which limits my meaning here to imprisonment.
NK continued:
Had we been able to locate her twenty years ago, I’m sure we would have imprisoned her at that point — and by now, she’d (probably) have completed her sentence!
Punishment could, I suppose, be looked at as closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, but only in a very limited sense. First of all, to inflict punishment, while the crime cannot be undone, the felon is in custody and able to be punished; if the barn door has been closed, it has been closed on te malefactor.
Second, punishment serves the societal purpose of informing others that no, they might not get away with crimes either.
Dana (a90377) — 8/16/2006 @ 7:12 pmI like this discussion, Dana. There are some crimes so horrific that they demand retribution (punishment if you wish) because society’s failure to express its disapproval violently would be damaging to society itself. The crime would be a stain on society’s own soul. I concede that point wholeheartedly. That’s why I do not oppose the death penalty (although I defer to the collective wisdom of my fellow citizens as to when and how it should be administered.) Yet, if I care for a safer world for my child to live in then I want as many bad guys as possible being made incapable of committing any more crimes. Whether that incapacitation is also a punishment to the criminal has absolutely no bearing to the objectively demonstrable benefit of a safer society. I admit that it is a utilitarian, even dehumanizing, approach. Reverse Marxism: The essential value of a criminal is his incapacity to commit further crimes.
nk (8214ee) — 8/16/2006 @ 7:50 pmWe regularly see journalists claiming that sure, there may be occasional errors due to ignorance or a rush to print, but there is no liberal bias. I’ll believe that when the LA Times starts printing adulatory profiles of Nazis and Klansmen. In other words when pigs fly.
pst314 (20d3ed) — 8/16/2006 @ 8:02 pmSARA JANE OLSON should have though about the conciquences of getting involved with terrorist dirt bags like the SLA and as they say IF YOU DO THE CRIME THEN YOU DO THE TIME and the SMELL A Times is another liberal leftist rag not worth read and certianly not worth linning a birdscage with not even a vultues cage
krazy kagu (1b5cd8) — 8/19/2006 @ 1:18 pmI’ve followed the “SLA” terrorist case for about 30 years, and since Kathleen Soliah (AKA Sara Jane Olson) and her cohorts have been tracked down and arrested, I’ve paid even more attention. Soliah and her partner were identified by tourists at the scene of a last (?) SLA bombing at the Hearst Estate in CA. This from a large photo lineup (the tourists left the bombed building just before the blast).
There is no question that Soliah and her Marxist revolutionaries are intricately linked to bombings, robberies, murders and a successful double police car bombing (Marin County Courthouse, cooley planned to kill police) and other thefts and violence.
She remains a darling of the revolutionary left and many Socialists everywhere. Her sentence was very light, concerning her background of crime. Out in about 2 years??? That’s a small disaster for our justice system. Several of the SLA gang members and helpers have gone scot-free, including her brother and sister (few would know that). We’re talking here about the Soliah ‘killer family’.
We’ll all die of old age before justice is done in this and many other revolutionary terrorist cases of those ‘back in the day’ times. Some home grown terrorists bask in a a golden retirement from prominent universities, though many others live in quiet (very quiet) seclusion, and several dozen are ‘political refugees’ in the Socialist Paradise, Cuba.
Just thought you’d like to know.
G. R. Leonard (f214b0) — 1/2/2007 @ 10:27 pmThose of you spewing judgement and sarcasm about Sara/Kathleen, as if you had any clue as to the full magnitude and details of this extraordinarily complex case, just come across like bumbling archair justices to me. People do make mistakes in this world, sometimes really bad ones, but what separates the good people from the bad human beings is how they handle them. You don’t believe she feels remorse? Let me ask you: Is there anything at all that she could do or say that would make you NOT think she’s a despicable terrorist? I didn’t think so. Well I know more than you do about the human being that is Sara/Kathleen, and despite the fact that I am pro-death penalty, believe severe punishments are a great deterrent, and detest all crime & criminals, Sara/Kathleen is one offender I would release today had I the power to do so. If you knew more I think you’d be ashamed of how judgemental you are. But of course we are all entitled to our opinions. That’s mine.
Dale (15f0d3) — 5/14/2007 @ 3:35 pmSara Jane Olson is a moron. That by itself is no crime. She’s also a self-righteous, hollier-than-thou lefty. Again, that’s no crime either. But she did try to kill two police officers. And, that is a crime. Given that she’s a felon and an arrogant twit and that she has shown no real remorse at having done anything wrong (gawd forbid!!), spending several years in the BIG HOUSE is a perfect use of government funds.
I’m glad she’s sitting there in her cell at this very moment.
Loren (b77f98) — 1/1/2008 @ 12:48 amOh, I meant to add one other thing:
HAPPY NEW YEAR, SARA JANE OLSON!!!
Loren (b77f98) — 1/1/2008 @ 12:49 amRemind me to send her some soap, sans the rope…
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 1/1/2008 @ 5:15 amSara supporters should think of the lives she has ruined instead of her light sentence. Im glad she is in prison and hopefully karma will catch up with that moron.
RON (7b8590) — 1/14/2008 @ 12:01 am