SLA Case Fires Passions in Berkeley

Never shy about weighing in on matters far outside its boundaries, the Berkeley City Council is set to consider a resolution supporting SLA bomb plot defendant Sara Jane Olson, who is scheduled to go on trial in January--hundreds of miles away in Los Angeles.

They take their politics seriously in the left-leaning Northern California university town that over the years has been dubbed “Berzerkeley.”

The resolution, recently approved by the city’s Peace and Justice Commission, asks Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and Superior Court Judge James M. Ideman to drop the charges against Olson, a 53-year-old doctor’s wife from Minnesota. It also asks Gov. Gray Davis to pardon her.

Citing a gag order in the case, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office chuckled, but declined comment. Another spokeswoman in Sacramento said the governor’s office has not received any request to pardon Olson.

If the Olson resolution makes it onto the council’s agenda as planned, her cause will join a host of others near and dear to liberal, new-aged hearts. Drivers who enter Berkeley are greeted by signs informing them, “You are entering a nuclear free zone.” And, over the years the council has considered resolutions calling for an end to apartheid in South Africa, Styrofoam cups and ATM fees--and endorsing recycling, same-sex marriage and the use of medicinal marijuana.

The Olson resolution describes the prosecution against the civic-minded mother of three as vindictive and politically motivated. It calls the charges a threat to free speech and compares the Olson case to other political trials, including the 1960s conspiracy cases against the Black Panthers, Vietnam War protesters and the Chicago 7. In such cases, the resolution states, conspiracy charges were filed against dissenters to silence them.

“It is important that we not allow Sara Jane Olson (a.k.a. Kathleen Ann Soliah) to take the place in the history books that the Los Angeles district attorney has in mind for her, since her loss would encourage the further use of conspiracy laws to punish political ideas,” a draft of the resolution states.

Olson is accused of plotting with members of the Symbionese Liberation Army to blow up two police cars--and kill the officers inside--during the summer of 1975. The pipe bombs, tightly packed with nails, did not detonate. Olson, who could face life in prison if convicted, is free on $1-million bail.

Prosecutors allege that the bombs were meant as retaliation for the deaths of six SLA members during a police shootout and fire at their Los Angeles house in April 1974.

The resolution was sponsored by commission member Eliot Cohen. Olson’s brother, longtime Berkeley resident Steve Soliah, broke his silence on the case, writing the commission a letter seeking its support. Steve Soliah was tried and acquitted of participating in an SLA bank robbery in Sacramento during which a customer was shot and killed.

“My sister Sara is a good person whose goal in life is to be an active and helpful human being,” Soliah wrote, adding that his sister never hid from authorities.

“Sara is a community activist and a well-known performer in the theater arts in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area,” he wrote, noting that her photograph appears prominently on a local theater’s Web site.

He added that the Los Angeles prosecution “can only be described as bizarre. I think it is right for the city of Berkeley to renounce it.”

The resolution takes particular note of one prosecution witness--publishing heiress Patty Hearst Shaw--who was 19 and a student at UC Berkeley when she was kidnapped by the SLA in February 1974. The resolution states that Hearst “has a powerful incentive” to provide evidence for prosecutors because she is seeking a presidential pardon for crimes she committed while with the SLA.